THE  LIBRARY 
OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


( 


SOUTHERN  BRANCH, 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA, 

LIBRARY, 
i-OS  ANGELES,  8AUg 


LECTURES, 


ANNUAL  REPORTS, 


EDUCATION. 


BY 

HOR4QJE  jMANN. 


CAMBRIDGE: 
PUBLISHED    FOR    THE    EDITOR. 

1867. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  18<5f>, 

BY  MRS.  MARY  MANN, 
In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


STEREOTYPED   AND   PRINTED   BT 
SEO.  C.  BAND  t    AVERT,  3  COBNIIIt.L,  BOSTON. 


TO 
HIS    EXCELLENCY 

GEORGE    N.    BRIGGS, 

GOVERNOR  OF  THE  COMMONWEALTH  OF  MASSACHUSETTS,  AND  EX-OFFICIO 

Chairman  of   the    IBoarir  of   (^buratiott, 

Q  o         <^? 

AND  TO  THE  OTHER  MEMBERS  OF  SAID  BOARD, 
THIS  VOLUME,  PREPARED  AT  THEIR  REQUEST, 

IS  GRATEFULLY  DEDICATED, 
BT 

THE   AUTHOR. 


EDITOR'S    PREFACE. 


IN  preparing  the  present  volumes  of  Mr.  Mann's 
works  for  republication,  I  have  gone  back  to  his 
very  first  expositions  of  the  deficiencies  in  the 
administration  of  our  common-school  system,  not 
only  because  it  is  a  matter  of  historical  interest  to 
note  the  commencements  of  the  reform  in  which 
he  was  so  actively  engaged  for  twelve  years,  but 
because,  on  looking  into  the  present  condition  of 
the  schools,  even  in  Massachusetts,  in  towns  not 
twenty  miles  from  Boston,  the  same  defects  may 
be  observed  in  many  cases,  and  in  many  respects, 
which  at  first  attracted  his  attention. 

Schoolhouses,  as  well  as  churches,  are  still 
erected  without  the  proper  means  of  ventilation ; 
seats  are  still  arranged  without  reference  to  the 
eye-sight  of  the  children ;  examinations  of  school- 
teachers, by  School  Committees,  are  still  very  im- 
perfectly conducted,  thus  entailing  upon  schools 
teachers  who  are  deficient  either  in  knowledge,  or 
in  the  power  of  governing  upon  right  principles ; 
and  no  amount  of  knowledge  in  a  teacher  is  of 
much  avail  where  a  deficiency  in  this  power  exists. 
In  reading  ever  Mr.  Mann's  exhortations  upon 


ri  EDITOR'S  PREFACE. 

these  points,  one  is  amazed  to  find  how  little  head- 
way has  been  made ;  for  these  evils  are  still  exist- 
ent in  schools ;  and  we  would  commend  these  Lec- 
tures and  Reports  to  every  citizen  who  may  be 
eligible  to  selection  as  a  School-Committee-man. 

In  re-organizing  the  Southern  portion  of  our 
country,  they  will  prove  invaluable  guides.  And 
the  government  of  still  another  country,  sister 
Republics  on  the  other  side  of  the  equator,  are. 
subscribing  largely  for  these  works  of  Mr.  Mann, 
by  whose  help  they  hope  to  give  vitality  and  effi- 
ciency to  the  common-school  system,  which  they 
have  already  adopted  on  the  model  of  our  own. 

It  is  not  denied  that  common-school  education, 
public,  democratic  school  education,  is  held  in  very 
different  and  much  higher  estimation  than  at  the 
time  when  the  Massachusetts  Board  of  Education 
and  the  Normal  Schools  were  inaugurated ;  but 
few  persons  who  are  intimately  acquainted  with 
the  subject  will  deny  that  the  tone  of  the  schools 
is  still  far  below  what  our  advanced  condition  of 
prosperity  and  science  demands.  A  suggestion 
of  reform  in  Harvard  University  has  of  late  been 
made  by  one  of  the  most  distinguished  and 
thoughtful  of  its  sons,  one  who  will  not  be  accused 
of  any  visionary  schemes,  but  who  is  so  far  conser- 
vative as  to  be  eminently  just  all  round.  He  ad- 
mits the  necessity,  when  Harvard  shall  be  changed 
from  a  High  School  to  a  University,  of  an  ex- 
tended course  of  instruction  in  schools  ;  where  the 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE.  vii 

studies  are  now,  taking  schools  on  an  average,  so 
limited  in  their  scope,  that  they  do  not  answer  the 
purpose  of  a  preparatory  school  for  the  colleges, 
so  that  private  instruction  is  much  sought  for  this 
end.  When  the  principle  of  the  "Kindergarten" 
shall  be  fully  adopted  in  the  primary  schools,  so 
that  children  may  be  put  in  possession  of  all  their 
faculties,  besides  being  taught  to  read,  to  write, 
and  to  count  (which  is  now  all  that  is  truly  effected 
in  primary  schools,  unless  individual  teachers  hap- 
pen to  have  a  natural  vocation  for  their  office,  and 
instinctively  supply  craving  little  souls  with  some 
of  the  nourishment  adapted  to  their  susceptible 
age),  and  when  the  finest  minds  and  the  highest 
training  and  preparation  shall  be  considered  indis- 
pensable for  teachers  of  schools  of  every  grade, 
and  are  commanded  by  proper  rates  of  compen- 
sation, our  educational  measures  may  be  said  to 
have  taken  a  second  step.  It  may  still  be  said 
here,  as  has  been  said  of  late  in  South  America  by 
a  distinguished  educationist,  that  more  appropria- 
tions are  made  for  railroads  than  for  education.  It 
is  true  that  railroads  and  schools  help  one  another 
forward.  When  railroads  penetrate  every  great 
section  of  this  immense  country,  other  things 
follow  in  regular  order ;  but  statistics  will  show 
that  education  does  not  take  the  lead  yet,  as  it 
ought  to  do.  The  laying  of  railroads  seems  to 
create  population,  not  merely  to  set  it  in  motion. 
The  next  thing  to  be  done,  surely,  is  to  train  this 


viii  EDITOR'S  PREFACE. 

increased  population  in  the  way  it  should  go.  The 
present  anomalous  condition  of  our  country  en- 
forces this  argument.  We  are  still  in  danger  of 
being  led  by  might  rather  than  right,  and  there  is 
no  remedy  for  this  but  in  the  increased  intelligence 
of  the  people. 

It  is  interesting  to  see  that  the  colored  people, 
whose  distinguishing  trait  at  the  present  time 
seems  to  be  their  desire  for  knowledge,  are  taking* 
the  schools  into  their  hands  in  regions  where  they 
predominate  in  numbers  over  the  white  popula- 
tion. They  are  forming  School  Committees  among 
themselves,  and  colored  teachers  are  pressing  for- 
ward more  and  more  to  take  the  places  of  the 
white  ones  who  have  so  eagerly  taken  up  the 
cause  of  their  neglected  education.  The  force 
with  which  the  emancipated  slaves,  and  even  the 
free  colored  population  of  the  South,  have  been 
deprived  of  education,  is  undoubtedly  the  main- 
spring of  that  wonderful  rebound,  which  has  never 
known  a  parallel  in  the  world's  history,  —  the 
rebound  of  a  wholly  oppressed  and  degraded 
people  to  free  themselves  suddenly  from  the 
trammels  of  ignorance.  They  feel,  instinctively, 
that  knowledge  is  power ;  and  that  instinct  must 
serve  them  until  the  pleasures  of  knowledge,  for 
its  own  sake,  can  take  the  place  of  it.  It  is 
devoutly  to  be  hoped,  that  they  may  have  such 
furtherance  from  others  as  will  insure  their  being 
enabled  to  taste  these  pleasures;  because  that 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE.  ix 

result  alone  will  carry  them  through  the  hard 
paths  they  are  destined  to  travel  in  pursuit  of  the 
object  which  they  so  ardently  desire, —  an  equality 
of  social  condition  with  the  whites.  No  accumu- 
lation of  worldly  riches,  nothing  but  education, 
can  ever  give  it  to  them.  And  there  is  no  doubt 
that  every  obstacle  will  be  thrown  in  their  way, 
for  generations  to  come,  to  bar  their  entrance  into 
that  heaven.  Their  unsurpassed  vitality,  their 
unfathomable  faith,  are  needed,  to  sustain  them 
under  the  trial ;  but  these  give  fair  promise  of 
answering  to  the  demand.  That  these  volumes 
may  help  them  to  wise  methods,  is  the  sincere  wish 
of  the  Editor ;  and  their  author  would  feel  no  less 
earnestly  the  desire  of  contributing  something  to 
a  cause  for  which  he  labored  so  intently  and  self- 
forgettingly. 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURE   I. 

PAG*. 

MEANS  AND  OBJECTS  OF  COMMON-SCHOOL  EDUCATION  39 


LECTURE    II. 

SPECIAL  PREPARATION  A  PREREQUISITE  TO  TEACHING      . 


LECTURE    III. 

THE   NECESSITY  OF   EDUCATION   IN  A  REPUBLICAN  GOV- 

ERNMENT ......        ....     143 

LECTURE    IV. 

WHAT  GOD  DOES,  AND   WHAT   HE   LEAVES  FOR  MAN  TO 

»o,  IN  THE  WORK  OF  EDUCATION        .        .        .        .191 

LECTURE     V. 

AN  HISTORICAL  VIEW  OF  EDUCATION  ;  SHOWING  ITS  DIG- 

NITY AND  ITS  DEGRADATION  ......     241 

LECTURE    VI. 
ON  DISTRICT-SCHOOL  LIBRARIES  ......     297 

LECTURE    VH. 

ON  SCHOOL  PUNISHMENTS     .......    338 

xi 


Xli  CONTENTS. 


PAOK. 

FIRST  ANNUAL  REPORT  OF  THE  BOARD  OF  EDUCATION         371 


FIRST  ANNUAL  REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY  OF  THE  BOARD 

OF  EDUCATION 384 

REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY  OF  THE  BOARD  OF  EDUCA- 
TION ON  THE  SUBJECT  OF  SCHOOLHOUSES  (SUPPLE- 
MENTARY TO  HIS  FIRST  ANNUAL  REPORT)  .  .  .  433 

SECOND"  ANNUAL   REPORT  OF   THE   SECRETARY   OF   THE        „ 
BOARD  OF  EDUCATION    ....  ,    493 


PROSPECTUS 


COMMON-SCHOOL  JOURNAL. 


WE  avail  ourselves  of  this  opportunity  to  set  forth,  at 
some  length,  the  considerations  which  have  induced  us 
to  incur  the  labor  and  the  responsibility  of  preparing 
such  a  work,  and  to  present  an  outline  of  the  views  which 
it  will  be  our  endeavor  hereafter  to  fill  up. 

The  title  we  have  chosen  will  turn  the  mind  of  every 
reader  to  that  ancient  and  cherished  institution,  the 
Common  Schools  of  Massachusetts.  It  will  naturally 
suggest  such  questions  as  these :  What  rank  are  com- 
mon schools  entitled  to  hold  in  our  private  and  legislative 
regards  ?  After  an  experiment  of  almost  two  hundred 
years,  what  is  the  verdict  rendered  by  Time  on  their 
utility  and  necessity?  Is  the  homage  we  are  wont  to 
pay  them  traditionary  merely,  or  is  it  founded  upon  an 
intelligent  conviction  and  an  actual  realization  of  their 
benefits  ?  Have  they  scattered  good  among  past  gener- 
ations, and  have  they  averted  evil?  Go  back  to  the 
earliest  days  of  the  colony,  —  to  the  year  1647,  when 
they  had  their  origin,  —  when  almost  the  whole  of  the 
present  territory  of  this  State  was  wilderness ;  strike  out 
of  existence  this  single  element  —  the  provision  made 


2  PROSPECTUS    OF   TIIE 

for  the  education  of  the  whole  people  —  and  would  our 
recorded  history  be  different  from  what  it  is?  "Would  it 
have  been  illuminated  or  darkened  by  the  change? 
Without  the  schools,  should  we  have  had  the  great  men 
in  the  councils  and  in  the  fields  of  the  Revolution?  or, 
which  is  substantially  the  same  question,  should  we  have 
had  the  mothers  of  those  men?  Should  we  have  had  the 
sages  who  formed  our  own  state  Constitution,  and  as- 
sisted in  that  more  arduous  work,  the  formation  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States?  Without  the  schools^ 
should  we  have  had  the  industrious  yeomanry,  exhibiting 
so  generally  within  our  limits  the  cheering  signs  of  com- 
fort, competence,  and  respectability;  or  that  race  of 
artisans  and  inventors  who  have  made  partnership  with 
the  inexhaustible  powers  of  the  material  world,  and  won 
their  resistless  forces  to  labor  for  human  amelioration? 
Without  the  schools,  would  the  same  qualities  of  intelli- 
gence and  virtue  have  signalized  the  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands who,  from  the  distant  regions  of  the  West  and 
South,  turn  their  eyes  hither  ward  to  their  ancestral 
home  ?  Would  our  enterprise  equally  have  circuited  the 
globe,  and  brought  back  whatever  products  belong  to  a 
milder  climate  or  a  richer  soil  ?  Without  this  simple  and 
humble  institution,  would  no  change  have  come  over  our 
character  abroad,  our  social  privileges  at  home,  over  the 
laws  which  sustain,  the  charities  which  bless,  the  morals 
which  preserve,  the  religion  which  sanctifies  ? 

Set  down  the  true  constituents  of  a  people's  greatness 
and  happiness,  and  compare  Massachusetts  with  those 
states  where  one  may  travel  from  border  to  border  with- 
out ever  seeing  a  schoolhouse ;  compare  nations,  other- 
wise similarly  circumstanced,  in  one  of  which  common 
schools  have  been  maintained,  in  the  other  unknown  — 
.Scotland  with  England  or  Ireland,  Holland  with  Spain 


COMMON-SCHOOL   JOURNAL.  3 

or  Portugal,  and  say  whether  the  contrast  can  be  but 
partially  and  inadequately  explained,  on  any  known  prin- 
ciples of  human  nature,  if  the  system  of  Public  Instruc- 
tion be  left  out  of  the  comparison.  Indeed,  the  only 
consideration  of  weight  to  prove  the  inefficiency  of  our 
public  schools  to  elevate  and  dignify  the  people  who  sus- 
tain them,  is  the  indifference  and  neglect  into  which  they 
have  fallen  amongst  ourselves :  and  yet  they  have  not 
wholly  fallen  into  forgetfulness  in  a  community  which 
rouses  itself  to  reclaim  them. 

It  may,  indeed,  be  said,  that  it  was  freedom  of  thought, 
constituting,  as  it  did,  the  main  element  of  Protestantism, 
which  has  given  superiority  to  the  communities  where 
common  schools  have  flourished.  But  if  Protestantism, 
from  which  systems  of  public  instruction  emanated,  has 
always  tended  towards  free  institutions,  yet  could  Prot- 
estantism itself  have  survived  without  the  alliance  of  a 
system  of  public  instruction  ?  If  the  mother  watched 
over  the  child,  protected  it  at  seasons  when  it  would 
otherwise  have  perished,  and  nursed  it  into  manly  vigor, 
has  not  the  child,  with  filial  piety,  requited  the  boon,  by 
vindicating  the  cause,  and  even  preserving  the  existence, 
of  the  mother  ? 

That  the  general  interest  once  felt  in  regard  to  our 
common  schools  has  subsided  to  an  alarming  degree  of 
indifference,  is  a  position  not  likely  to  be  questioned  by 
any  one  who  has  compared  their  earlier  with  their  later 
history.  This  is  not  to  be  attributed  to  any  single  cause, 
but  to  the  co-operation  of  many.  First,  perhaps,  in  the 
series,  came  the  life-struggle  of  the  Revolution.  Educa- 
tion is  principally  concerned  with  the  future.  Its  eye  is 
fixed  on  a  remote  object,  whose  magnitude  only  makes 
it  visible  in  the  distance  ;  for  it  is  with  our  moral  as  with 
our  natural  vision,  the  dimensions  of  the  vast  are  reduced 


4  PROSPECTUS   OF   THE 

by  remoteness  to  the  size  of  the  minute  in  proximity  ; 
as  in  the  case  of  the  astronomer,  who,  while  looking  at 
the  sun,  saw  an  animal  of  huge  limbs  and  immense  bulk 
rushing  up  on  one  side,  and  soon  overshadowing  and 
darkening  its  whole  surface,  which  proved  to  be  only  a 
fly  crossing  the  upper  lens  of  his  telescope.  The  revo- 
lutionary struggle  was  one  for  self-preservation,  and,  of 
course,  it  condensed  the  future  into  the  immediate  and 
the  present.  After  that  epoch  passed,  the  fiscal  condi- 
tion of  the  country,  the  momentous  questions  connected 
with  the  organization  of  a  new  government,  without 
model  or  precedent  in  the  history  of  mankind,  and,  at  a 
later  period,  the  agitations  of  party,  have  engrossed  the 
time  and  enlisted  the  talents  of  men  most  interested  in 
elevating  the  character  of  the  people,  and  most  compe- 
tent to  do  it.  It  cannot  be  denied,  too,  that  for  years  past 
the  public  eye  has  been  pointed  backwards  to  the  achieve- 
ments of  our  ancestors,  rather  than  forward  to  the  con- 
dition of  our  posterity;  as  though  the  praise  of  dead 
fathers  would  provide  adequately  for  living  children. 
The  public  voice,  the  public  press,  and  the  public  mind 
have  been  prolific  of  that  doubtful  virtue,  which  substi- 
tutes empty  commendations  of  what  is  good  for  earnest 
efforts  to  procure  it. 

After  the  more  important  institutions  of  the  country 
had  been  settled,  and  an  abundant  accumulation  of  the 
means  of  subsistence  had  bestowed  leisure,  it  would 
naturally  happen  that  a  portion  of  public  talent  and  re- 
sources would  be  set  at  liberty,  and  left  to  choose  new 
spheres  of  action  and  new  objects  of  bounty.  But  here 
arose  those  various  philanthropic  enterprises,  whose  ob- 
jects lie  beyond  the  limits  of  our  own  territory.  Had  it 
not  been  for  their  claims  to  precedence,  it  may  be  pre- 
sumed that  no  inconsiderable  portion  of  that  self-sacrifi- 


COMMON-SCHOOL  JOURNAL.  5 

cing  spirit  and  that  copious  stream  of  wealth,  so  bounti- 
fully expended  upon  other  causes,  would  have  found  a 
congenial  sphere  of  activity  in  cultivating  the  moral  and 
intellectual  wastes  within  our  own  borders.  We  have 
lately  heard  many  of  the  men,  who  have  been  foremost 
in  these  works,  speak  of  their  past  conduct,  in  language 
which  said,  "  These  things  ought  we  to  have  done,  but 
not  to  have  left  the  others  undone."  And  even  those 
munificent  contributions  in  aid  of  different  departments 
of  learning,  made  amongst  ourselves,  and  to  be  expended 
amongst  ourselves,  have  been  confined,  with  one  recent 
and  praiseworthy  exception,  to  the  higher  literary  insti- 
tutions of  the  country.  Though  their  beams  have  been 
vivifying  and  nourishing,  yet  they  have  been  shed  rather 
on  the  solitariness  of  the  summits  of  society  than  through 
the  populousness  of  its  valleys. 

Passing  by  many  causes  which  have  conduced  to  the 
same  end,  we  shall  mention  but  one  more.  In  no  other 
country  was  ever  such  a  bounty  offered  upon  industry 
and  practical  talent  as  in  ours.  Skill,  sagacity,  the  re- 
sults of  intellectual  application,  have  won  a  large  portion 
of  the  prizes  of  fame  and  of  opulence.  It  has  been  as 
though  an  officer  had  been  sent  to  every  house,  to  seek 
out  and  to  impress  whatever  could  be  made  available  for 
outward  and  material  prosperity.  Hence  wealth,  pos- 
sessions, whatever  makes  up  the  external  part  —  the 
body,  if  we  may  so  speak  —  of  human  welfare,  have  ad- 
vanced with  unparalleled  success ;  while  a  general  ameli- 
oration of  habits,  and  those  purer  pleasures  which  flow 
from  a  cultivation  of  the  higher  sentiments,  which  con- 
stitute the  spirit  of  human  welfare,  and  enhance  a  thou- 
sand-fold the  worth  of  all  temporal  possessions,  —  these 
have  been  comparatively  neglected.  Perhaps  it  is  in  the 
order  of  nature  that  a  people,  like  an  individual,  shall 


6  PEOSPECTUS    OF   THE 

first  provide  for  its  lower  and  animal  wants,  —  its  food, 
its  raiment,  its  shelter,  —  but  the  demands  of  this  part  of 
our  nature  should  be  watchfully  guarded,  lest  in  the  ac- 
quisition of  sensual  and  material  gratifications  we  lose 
sight  of  the  line  which  separates  competence  and  com- 
fort from  superfluity  and  extravagance,  and  thus  forget 
and  forfeit  our  nobler  capacities  for  more  rational  enjoy- 
ments. 

From  an  inherent  cause,  different  opinions  will  always 
be  entertained  of  the  value  of  education  by  different  men,. 
Those  who  think  most  correctly  upon  the  subject  will 
still  think  differently ;  and  this  difference  will  be  meas- 
ured by  the  difference  in  their  respective  powers  of 
comprehension  and  forethought.  Being  infinite  in  im- 
portance, the  only  question  can  be,  Who  approximates 
nearest  in  his  computation  of  its  worth  ?  Its  value  will 
be  rated  by  each  just  as  highly  as  he  can  think. 

The  necessity  of  education,  who  can  doubt?  The 
average  length  of  human  life  is  supposed  to  be  between 
thirty  and  forty  years.  How  many  efforts  are  to  be  put 
forth,  how  many  and  various  relations  to  be  filled,  how 
many  duties  to  be  performed,  within  that  brief  period  of 
time  !  How  ignorant  of  all  these  efforts,  relations  and 
duties  are  the  early  years  of  infancy  !  The  human  being- 
is  less  endowed  with  instincts  for  his  guidance  than  the 
lower  orders  of  animated  creation.  Consider  then  his 
condition  when  first  ushered  into  life.  He  is  encom- 
passed by  a  universe  of  relations,  each  one  of  which  will 
prove  a  blessing  or  a  curse,  just  according  to  the  position 
which  he  may  sustain  towards  it,  and  yet  in  regard  to  all 
these  relations  it  is  to  him  a  universe  of  darkness.  All 
his  faculties  and  powers  are  susceptible  of  a  right  direc- 
tion and  control,  and,  if  obedient  to  them,  blessings  innu- 
merable and  inexhaustible  will  be  lavished  upon  him. 


COMMON-SCHOOL    JOURNAL.  7 

But  all  his  powers  and  faculties  are  also  liable  to  a  wrong 
direction  and  control ;  and,  obedient  to  them,  he  becomes 
a  living  wound,  and  the  universe  of  encompassing  rela- 
tions presses  upon  him  only  to  torture  him.  And  yet 
into  this  universe  of  opportunities  for  happiness  on  the 
one  hand,  and  of  dangers  and  temptations  on  the  other, 
he  is  brought,  without  any  knowledge  whither  he  should 
go  or  what  he  should  do,  —  by  what  means  he  shall  se- 
cure happiness  or  avert  misery.  To  leave  such  a  being 
physically  alone,  that  is,  to  refuse  to  provide  nourish- 
ment, raiment,  protection  against  the  seasons  and  the 
elements,  would  be  to  insure  his  destruction.  But  such 
abandonment  would  be  mercy,  compared  with  leaving 
him  alone  intellectually  and  morally.  Nor  is  it  guidance 
merely  that  he  needs  ;  for  his  guides  will  be  soon  re- 
moved in  the  course  of  nature,  when  he  will  be  left  with 
the  dreadful  heritage  only  of  an  enlarged  consciousness 
of  wants  with  equal  inability  to  supply  them  —  with  capa- 
bilities of  suffering  immensely  multiplied  and  magnified, 
without  knowledge  of  antidote  or  remedy.  Before,  then, 
his  natural  protectors  and  guardians  and  teachers  are  re- 
moved, they  will  leave  their  work  undone  if  he  have  not 
been  prepared  to  protect  and  guide  and  teach  himself. 
Nay,  if  the  generation  that  is,  do  not  raise  above  their 
own  level  the  generation  that  is  to  be,  the  race  must  re- 
main stationary,  and  the  sublime  law  of  human  progres- 
sion be  defeated. 

But  passing  by  these  general  considerations,  we  will 
select  a  few  specific  topics,  in  order  to  demonstrate  that 
a  proper  education  of  the  rising  generation  is  the  highest 
earthly  duty  of  the  risen. 

That  intelligence  and  virtue  are  the  only  support  and 
stability  of  free  institutions,  was  a  truism  a  long  time 
ago.  If  free  institutions  have  any  other  security,  we 


8  PROSPECTUS   OF  THE 

should  be  glad  to  know  what  it  is.  This  great  truth, 
however,  like  many  others,  has  received  the  readiest 
assent  of  the  reason,  without  producing  that  effect  upon 
the  feelings  which  gives  birth  to  action.  It  has  been 
admitted  and  forgotten.  .  We  act  like  those  debtors  who 
seem  to  think  that  an  acknowledgment  of  the  existence 
of  their  indebtedness  supersedes  or  postpones  the  obli- 
gation of  payment.  But  such  a  truth  as  this  ought  to  be 
wrought  into  the  minds  of  the  whole  people,  so  that  it 
will  remain  there,  not  dormant  as  a  mere  conclusion  of 
the  reason,  but  impulsive  as  an  instinct  of  self-preserva- 
tion. Nor  is  it  the  intelligence  of  a  few,  which  will  sup- 
ply the  indispensable  condition  of  freedom,  but  that  of 
the  many;  nor  a  theoretic  intelligence  either,  but  a  work- 
ing intelligence.  Nor,  again,  will  it  suffice  to  have  men 
who  preach  virtue  or  sing  it ;  but  we  must  have  men  who 
produce  it  themselves  and  know  how  to  cultivate  its 
germs  in  others.  It  is  not  enough  to  have  men  who  call 
themselves  Christians ;  but  Christians  must  re-examine 
and  verify  the  text,  and  learn  whether  their  great  Mas- 
ter went  about  doing  good  or  talking  good  merely. 

Who,  let  us  ask,  are  to  control  that  legislation  of  the 
state  and  country,  which  has  been  well  compared  to  the 
atmosphere,  which  surrounds  us  wherever  we  may  be 
or  whithersoever  we  may  go  ?  In  relation  to  the  law,  no 
man  is  ever  alone.  There  is  no  earthly  interest  of  any 
man,  which  the  law,  either  in  its  enactment  or  its  admin- 
istration, cannot  reach.  It  may  alter  our  relation  to  our 
property,  if  we  have  any,  or  to  all  the  means  of  acquiring 
it,  if  we  have  none.  It  may  take  away  our  reputation, 
or  surround  us  with  a  community  where  to  be  worthy  of 
a  good  reputation  would  be  a  legal  disability,  arid  work 
a  forfeiture  of  social  privileges.  The  first  act  of  the  law 
is  to  prohibit  every  man  from  redressing  his  own  wrongs. 


COMMON-SCHOOL  JOURNAL.  9 

Hence,  by  its  perverted  or  even  mistaken  judgments,  it 
may  inflict  wounds  upon  an  injured  man,  even  deeper 
than  those  it  ought  to  heal.  If  the  law  fails  to  supply 
the  remedy  which  it  forbids  the  individual  to  pursue  for 
himself,  it  leaves  him,  in  that  respect,  one  degree  worse 
than  he  would  be  in  a  state  of  utter  barbarism.  It  ties 
his  hands,  which  in  a  state  of  nature  would  be  free,  and 
then  permits  another  to  wrong  him  with  impunity.  So, 
too,  the  laws  of  a  people  not  only  add  to  or  subtract  from 
the  value  of  life,  by  extending  their  control  over  those 
things  which  constitute  so  much  of  its  welfare,  but  in  the 
case  of  national  hostilities  they  take  life  itself  without 
stint  or  remuneration. 

Now  look  at  the  agency  and  the  agents,  —  the  com- 
mission to  be  executed  and  those  who  are  to  execute  it. 
The  agency  is  the  government  of  the  state  and  country, 
embracing  in  its  comprehensive  sway  most  of  the  greater 
and  all  the  lesser  interests  of  life  ;  extending  far  into  the 
future,  as  well  as  controlling  the  present.  In  the  State 
of  Massachusetts,  the  agents  are  any  citizen  who  shall 
have  resided  within  its  limits  one  year,  within  the  town 
six  months,  and  shall  have  paid  so  much  as  a  poll-tax, 
provided  one  has  been  assessed  upon  him.  And  these 
agents  have  power  to  act,  wholly  independent  of  instruc- 
tions and  exempt  from  accountability.  In  the  language 
of  the  law,  they  have  a  power  of  attorney,  irrevocable,  to 
dispose,  according  to  their  own  good  pleasure,  of  the 
dearest  and  most  momentous  interests  of  society.  Now 
what  man  in  the  community,  in  the  selection  of  an  agent 
or  trustee  to  administer  his  private  affairs,  governs  his 
choice  by  such  a  list  of  qualifications?  Is  an  overseer 
in  a  manufactory,  a  cashier  of  a  bank,  a  clerk  in  a  count- 
ing-house, a  foreman  in  a  mechanic's  shop,  a  market-man 
who  carries  the  produce  of  the  farmer  to  market,  chosen 


10  PEOSPECTUS    OF   THE 

without  reference  to  any  higher  standard  of  conduct  or 
character  than  that  he  has  paid  a  poll-tax  within  two 
3rears  ?  And  yet  no  one  of  these  interests  is  comparable, 
in  importance,  to  many  of  those  of  which  tlie  voter  dis- 
poses at  the  ballot-box.  In  all  other  cases,  we  look  for 
fitness  and  qualification  —  a  combination  of  properties, 
adapted  to  the  trust  to  be  reposed  or  the  work  to  be 
done.  A  voter  is  a  public  man ;  he  is  a  member  of  the 
p;overnment ;  he  officiates,  indirectly,  in  the  three  de- 
partments, judicial,  legislative,  executive.  Surely,  such-* 
a  member  of  the  administration  ought  to  be  intelligent, 
upright,  conscientious,  impartial,  firm ;  and  yet  his  pos- 
session of  all  these  qualities  and  virtues  is  inferred,  by 
political  argumentation,  from  a  certificate  of  a  brief  pe- 
riod of  domicile  and  the  payment  of  a  few  shillings ! 
What  consequences  will  impend  over  society,  and  will 
assuredly  befall  it  too,  if,  at  the  great  council  of  the  bal- 
lot-box, we  see  men,  who  but  yesterday  arrived  at 
majority,  who  know  nothing  of  the  principles  and  struc- 
ture of  the  government  under  which  they  live,  of  the 
functions  of  its  officers,  or  the  qualifications  indispensa- 
ble for  discharging  them; — if  we  see  there  men,  who, 
for  half  a  century,  have  labored  to  draw  society  back- 
wards towards  barbarism ;  or,  what  is  even  worse  than 
barbarism,  to  prostitute  civilized  intelligence  to  gratify 
savage  desires;  —  if  we  see  there  men,  lately  emerged 
from  confinement  in  prison,  where  they  were  doomed  for 
some  outrage  on  the  rights  of  the  community,  Avhich, 
however  violative  of  those  rights  it  may  have  been,  may 
not  be  half  so  baneful  as  the  measures  they  are  now 
favoring?  Nor  has  any  man  a  right  to  put  such  ques- 
tions as  these  to  those  disposers  of  his  welfare,  perhaps 
of  himself,  —  "  What  knowest  thou  of  government ;  of  the 
deep  principles  upon  which  it  rests ;  of  the  forethought 


COMMON-SCHOOL   JOURNAL.  11 

and  wisdom  its  policy  requires ;  of  the  equity  and  fidelity 
its  administration  demands  ?  What  carest  thou  for  the 
honesty  of  the  man  whose  name  is  borne  upon  thy  vote? 
Art  thou  for  making  him  ruler  over  many  cities,  because 
he  has  been  false  to  every  obligation  in  ruling  over  a 
lew  ?  "  Such  questions  are  out  of  place  ;  they  are  im- 
pertinent, in  that  forum  over  whose  portals  the  great 
law  of  POLITICAL  EQUALITY  is  written.  At  that  gate,  all 
characteristics  but  one  drop  off.  No  longer  is  there  re- 
membered either  the  virtues  of  the  good  or  the  wisdom 
of  the  wise,  the  folly  of  the  fool  or  the  guilt  of  the  crim- 
inal. The  judges  of  our  courts,  who  merely  expound  the 
laws,  are  commissioned  to  hold  their  offices  during  good 
behavior  ;  but  no  such  limitation  is  attached  to  the  right 
of  voters,  though  they  virtually  enact  the  laws  and  ap- 
point the  judges  who  administer  them.  In  a  judicial 
investigation  between  one  individual  and  another,  a 
witness  may  be  impeached  and  rejected  for  legal  infamy 
or  personal  interest.  He  is  not  allowed  to  taint  with  his 
corruption  the  pure  stream  of  justice.  Either  of  a  long 
catalogue  of  villanies  works  disqualification.  But  the 
elective  franchise  is  not  forfeited  by  any  magnitude  of 
interest  or  atrocity  of  character.  Now  as  there  is  a  wis- 
dom, prudence,  probity,  upon  which  individual  prosperity 
depends,  so  upon  the  same  qualities  does  the  prosperity 
of  a  government  depend.  Folly,  selfishness,  and  iniquity 
will  be  as  fatal  to  the  latter  as  to  the  former.  They  will 
ruin  a  nation  as  certainly  as  they  will  ruin  a  man.  How 
long,  then,  could  free  institutions  subsist,  under  adminis- 
trators either  weak  or  wicked?  How  long  under  weak- 
ness and  wickedness  combined  ? 

This  topic  is  so  momentous,  and,  as  we  fear,  so  super- 
ficially considered,  that  we  cannot  forbear  to  present  it 
under  another  form  of  elucidation.  It  is  yet  to  be  de- 


12  PEOSPECTUS    OF   THE 

veloped  how  close  a  partnership  is  a  republican  govern- 
ment with  the  right  of  universal  suffrage.  It  is  yet  to 
be  manifested,  that  each  citizen,  by  virtue  of  this  social 
partnership,  contributes,  as  his  part  of  the  common  capi- 
tal, his  hopes  for  the  future,  his  subsistence  for  the  pres- 
ent, his  reputation,  his  life.  By  virtue  of  this  compact, 
the  other  members  of  the  firm  have  power  to  dispose  of 
the  investments,  according  to  their  own  views  and  mo- 
tives, be  they  of  policy  or  plunder.  Not  entire,  however, 
is  the  analogy  between  a  business  partnership  between 
merchants  and  this  political  association.  Prom  the  for- 
mer a  man  can  withdraw,  when  he  finds  that  the  mis- 
management of  his  associates  is  overwhelming  his 
interests  with  ruin  and  his  character  with  disgrace. 
Retiring,  he  may  withdraw  whatever  remains  of  his  un- 
squandered  fortune.  But  not  so  in  this  political  partner- 
ship. Though  in  this  each  has  a  more  enlarged  power 
of  binding  the  whole,  yet  none  can  strike  his  name  from 
the  company  and  thereby  evade  the  imposition  of  new 
responsibilities.  The  only  legalized  modes  of  dissolving 
the  connection  are  death  or  self-banishment.  Would  it 
not  be  good  policy  for  the  members  of  such  a  firm  to  ex- 
pend a  little,  both  of  their  time  and  their  revenue,  to 
qualify  all  of  those  future  members,  whose  admission 
they  cannot  prevent? 

Shortlived,  indeed,  would  be  the  fame  of  our  ancestors, 
if  they  had  established  such  a  frame  of  government  with- 
out providing  some  extensive  guaranty  that  it  should 
escape  the  misrule  of  ignorance  and  licentiousness. 
Otherwise,  to  have  put  loaded  fire-arms  into  the  hands  of 
children  would  have  been  wisdom  in  comparison. 

Do  we  then  mourn  over  that  political  condition  of  con- 
tingent peril,  into  which  we  have  been  thrown  by  the 
great  events  of  the  past  ?  No  !  but  we  rejoice  with  un- 


COMMON-SCHOOL  JOURNAL.  13 

speakable  joy.  The  old  cycle  of  years  is -filled;  a  new 
era  dawns  upon  the  world.  In  our  day,  the  very  condi- 
tions of  social  existence  are  reversed.  Heretofore,  the 
rulers  of  the  earth  have  enjoyed  their  wealth  and  their 
power ;  they  have  rioted  in  splendid  palaces,  or  played 
the  terrible  games  of  war,  because  the  multitude  were 
robbed  not  only  of  their  rights,  but  of  all  the  means  of 
reclaiming  them.  Political  oppression  chained  the  bodies 
of  men ;  religious,  their  souls.  Look  backwards  through 
the  historic  vista,  and  how  scantily  peopled  has  the  earth 
been  with  beings  blessed  with  any  knowledge  of  human 
duties  or  any  enjoyment  of  human  rights.  Rulers,  by 
hereditary  descent  or  by  conquest,  a  few  commanders  of 
navies  or  of  armies,  —  some  hundred  men  in  a  nation  of 
millions  —  are  all  who  emerge  into  the  upper  day  of  his- 
tory, from  that  darkness  which  shrouds  the  countless 
myriads  of  our  race.  Sometimes  a  poet  in  singing  the 
praises  of  his  chief,  or  a  historian  in  enumerating  the 
elements  of  a  tyrant's  power,  has  noticed  the  number  of 
his  subject  millions ;  yet  with  as  little  recognition  of  their 
common  nature,  as  little  sympathy  for  their  condition,  as 
is  felt  by  a  curious  traveller,  who  computes  the  number 
of  insects  that  swarm  in  a  given  space  on  the  banks-  of 
the  Nile  or  the  Ganges.  The  beings  who  bore  the 
moral  lineaments  and  image  of  God,  would  have  been 
m;\inly  forgotten,  except  for  those  brief  statistics  which 
number  the  slaughtered  thousands  of  the  battle-field. 
And  in  all  this,  for  those  times,  there  was  a  certain  fit- 
ness and  propriety.  Prerogative,  dominion,  could  not 
otherwise  exist.  Sight  and  knowledge  on  one  side,  blind- 
ness and  ignorance  on  the  other,  were  the  circumstances 
that  made  equals  unequal.  Now  social  positions  are 
changed.  They  who  were  beneath,  are  above.  They 
who  obeyed,  rule.  And  hence,  those  who  have  more  of 


14  PROSPECTUS    OF   THE 

worldly  possessions  in  their  hands  ;  who,  from  higher  en- 
lightenment and  a  more  extensive  forecast,  in  regard  to 
their  children,  have  a  longer  reach  of  the  future  in  their 
eye,  must  seek  for  help,  not  in  the  ignorance  and  abase- 
ment, but  in  the  intelligence  and  elevation  of  the  multi- 
tude. What  would  once  have  been  their  ruin,  is  now 
their  only  salvation ;  for  that  multitude  is  safe  in  the 
power  it  wields.  No  monarch  surrounded  by  his  guards, 
no  nobleman  with  his  lengthened  retinue,  no  knight  in 
his  harness  of  mail,  was  ever  half  so  secure  in  his  suprem- 
acy, as  the  humblest  voter  is  with  us  of  making  his  will 
known  and  felt  through  all  the  ranks  of  society.  Hence 
do  we  rejoice,  that  in  the  providence  of  God  a  new  series 
of  events  has  been  unfolded,  which  will  compel  the  basest 
instincts  of  selfishness  to  co-operate  with  the  highest 
sentiments  of  duty  in  ameliorating  the  condition  of  man- 
kind, through  an  enlargement  of  their  understandings 
and  a  purification  of  their  affections.  If  the  multitude, 
who  have  the  power,  are  not  fitted  to  exercise  it,  society 
will  be  like  the  herding  together  of  wolves.  The  only 
safety,  then,  is  in  the  concomitance  of  qualifications  and 
power. 

All  our  readers  must  have  seen  or  heard  of  those 
strolling  companies  of  tumblers,  rope-dancers  or  balance- 
masters,  who,  among  other  feats,  build  human  pyramids. 
Four  stand  side  by  side  in  a  row ;  three  more  mount  up 
and  stand  upon  their  shoulders ;  two  others  overclimb 
these  and  make  a  third  tier ;  another  ascends  aloft,  some 
twenty  feet,  and,  poising  himself  on  the  topmost  shoul- 
ders, makes  the  apex  of  the  pyramid.  This  represents 
the  structure  of  despotic  governments  exactly.  While 
those  above  can  put  out  the  eyes  of  those  below  when- 
ever they  look  upward,  and  can  beat  them  (with  a  long 
pole,  commonly  called  a  sceptre)  into  due  subjection, 


COMMON-SCHOOL   JOUENAL.  15 

things  go  on  very  well.  But  when  those  below  discover 
how  the  great  and  equal  law  of  gravitation  bears  upon 
the  upper  strata,  and  begin  to  execute  certain  well-con- 
certed jostlings,  adapted  to  topple  down  their  highnesses, 
then,  from  having  the  farthest  to  fall,  they  find  themselves 
to  be  the  most  exposed  part  of  society  ;  and  if  not  utterly 
bereft  of  reason,  they  will  pray  Heaven  above  and  their 
underlings  below  to  let  them  get  down  as  safely  and  as 
fast  as  they  can.  Descended  to  a  common  platform,  they 
find  their  own  best  welfare  dependent  upon  the  common 
good  ;  and  that,  if  they  would  attain  superiority,  it  must 
be  that  noble  superiority,  which  arises  from  higher  char- 
acter and  more  beneficent  conduct.  This  is  the  condi- 
tion of  our  society,  and  this  the  law  by  which  the 
individual  welfare  of  its  members  is  governed. 

The  love  and  the  admiration  of  knowledge  are  instinc- 
tive in  the  human  mind.  Savages  tremble  before  those 
who  are  supposed  to  be  acquainted  with  the  secret 
workings  of  nature.  Divine  honors  are  won  amongst 
them  by  superior  knowledge.  And  with  civilized  nations 
in  modern  times,  the  veneration  for  talent  and  genius 
has  risen  to  such  a  height,  that,  by  common  consent,  dis- 
coveries in  science  and  achievements  in  literature  have 
been  regarded  as  a  surer  test  of  advancement,  as  confer- 
ring higher  honor,  than  exploits  in  arms  or  progress  in 
the  useful  arts.  But  still  the  object  and  the  rivalry  have 
been  to  enlarge  the  boundaries  of  science,  and,  if  we  may 
so  speak,  to  pile  up  knowledge,  mass  upon  mass,  to  such 
a  height,  that  its  bright  summits  might  be  visible  in  dis- 
tant lands.  There  has  been  no  ambition,  no  competition, 
to  spread  it  amongst  the  people.  To  produce  one  man, 
unmatched  elsewhere  in  his  department  of  learning,  has 
been  the  title  to  fame  amongst  emulous  nations.  To  ex- 
hibit one  man  who  could  read  twenty  foreign  languages, 


16  PROSPECTUS    OF   THE 

has  been  deemed  better  than  to  exhibit  tens  of  thousands 
who  could  read  understandingly  the  elevating  truths  con- 
tained in  their  own.  One  prodigy  of  genius  in  an  age 
has  answered  the  demands  of  humanity  upon  an  empire 
shrouded  in  ignorance.  What  a  chorus  for  the  triumph 
of  intellect  was  sung,  by  the  most  civilized  and  learned 
nation  in  the  old  world,  when  one  of  its  astronomers  dis- 
covered a  planet  in  the  distant  regions  of  space,  though 
millions  of  its  people  were  then  suffering  under  debasing 
superstitions,  derived  from  heathen  astrology.  In  1751," 
the  New  Style  was  substituted  for  the  Old,  by  the  Brit- 
ish Parliament.  The  scientific  labors  necessary  for  the 
change  were  principally  performed  by  the  Earl  of  Mac- 
clesfield  and  the  learned  astronomer  Dr.  Bradley.  Great 
pains  were  taken  beforehand  to  prepare  the  public  mind 
for  its  introduction ;  but  so  great  was  the  ignorance  and 
superstition  of  the  people,  that,  three  years  afterwards, 
when  a  son  of  Lord  Macclesfield  was  a  candidate  for  the 
House  of  Commons,  the  mob  pursued  him,  crying,  "  Give 
us  back  the  eleven  days  we  have  been  robbed  of;  "  — 
and  even  several  years  afterwards,  when  Dr.  Bradley, 
worn  down  by  his  labors  in  the  cause  of  science,  was 
sinking  under  the  disease  which  at  last  ended  his  days, 
the  people  attributed  his  sufferings  to  a  judgment  from 
heaven,  for  having  been  engaged  in  so  impious  an  un- 
dertaking. They  probably  thought  their  lives  had  been 
shortened  by  a  change  in  the  almanac.  As  a  conse- 
quence of  this  view,  that  an  enlargement  of  knowledge 
amongst  a  few  was  every  thing,  and  the  multiplication  of 
the  number  of  minds  capable  of  comprehending  and  en- 
joying it  was  nothing,  its  stores  have  been  gathered  into 
universities  and  learned  halls  ;  and  an  amount  of  time 
and  of  labor  has  been  uselessly  spent  in  cloistered  cells, 
sufficient  to  have  breathed  moral  life  and  intellectual  ac- 


COMMON-SCHOOL   JOURNAL.  17 

tivity  into  millions  of  minds.  While  over  wide  tracts  of 
British  territory,  persons  who  could  read  and  write  were 
scarcely  to  be  found,  the  funds  of  government  were  em- 
ployed to  collect  libraries  so  extensive  that  no  mortal 
could  accomplish  the  perusal  of  their  books,  except  his 
life  were  prolonged  to  such  seniority  as  would  displace 
Methuselah  from  his  rank  in  the  catechism.  In  the  year 
1826,  the  present  Lord  Brougham,  in  a  pamphlet  upon 
Education,  undertook  to  demonstrate,  for  the  benefit  of 
his  fellow-countrymen,  that  a  penny  a  week,  saved  from 
the  earnings  of  a  whole  family,  for  one  year,  would  en- 
able them  to  purchase  one  book  for  their  instruction  in 
some  of  the  commonest  duties  of  life.  But  that  great 
government,  instead  of  supplying  such  a  want,  has  spent 
tens  of  thousands  of  pounds  in  hunting,  amidst  icebergs 
and  polar  bears,  for  a  North-west  passage,  difficult  to  find, 
and  worthless  when  discovered. 

Far  different  is  the  grateful  path,  where  we  are  sum- 
moned to  a  glorious  duty.  Not  to  enter  every  dwelling 
and  seize  its  resources,  in  order  to  swell  the  redundancy 
of  some  treasure-house  of  knowledge  ;  not  to  collect  the 
rills,  whose  waters  might  fertilize  the  whole  land,  and 
gather  them  into  a  stagnant  reservoir :  —  this  is  not  our 
work  ;  but  multiplication,  diffusion,  ever-replenishing,  un- 
til the  people  shall  learn  the  nature  of  the  true  duties 
and  enjoyments  of  freemen.  Let  not  the  quest  for  new 
discoveries  cease ;  let  philosopher  after  philosopher  re- 
veal more  and  more  of  the  wonderful  works  of  nature, 
and  thus  present  to  all  men  new  reasons  for  adoration  of 
the  Creator.  We  would  not  call  back  any  one  who  is 
exploring  the  skies  or  diving  into  the  earth  for  know- 
ledge;  but  first  of  all,  we  would  diffuse  the  great  moral, 
social,  and  economical  truths,  already  discovered,  amongst 
the  people.  What  is  practically  valuable  among  the 


18  PROSPECTUS   OF   THE 

accumulations  of  past  centuries,  we  would  reproduce,  and 
make  it,  as  far  as  possible,  the  fireside  companion  of 
every  citizen ;  so  that  if  an  inventory  could  be  taken  of 
the  virtue  and  intelligence  of  the  people,  the  units  would 
swell  to  an  aggregate,  incomputable  by  the  highest 
standards  of  former  times. 

But  shall  we  aim  to  make  every  man  a  philosopher  ? 
If  by  this  is  meant  that  highest  reach  of  philosophy, 
which  consists  in  an  understanding  of  one's  duty  and 
destination,  and  a  disposition  to  perform  the  one  and  live 
up  to  the  other,  we  answer,  yes ;  but  not  that  every  man 
shall  be  linguist,  rhetorician,  or  astronomer,  any  more 
than  we  would  that  every  man  should  be  tailor,  black- 
smith, and  watchmaker.  Let  us  not,  however,  overlook 
one  of  the  most  striking  facts  in  the  ordination  of  provi- 
dence, that  the  truths,  which  it  required  the  greatest 
philosophers,  toiling  for  years,  perhaps  for  lives,  to  dis- 
cover, can  be  made  perfectly  intelligible  to  ordinary 
minds  in  weeks,  or  even  days.  It  took  the  race  more 
than  fifty-five  centuries  to  discover  and  establish  the  true 
solar  system ;  and  yet  the  space  of  fifty-five  hours  would 
suffice  to  give  to  an  intelligent  man  such  an  idea  of  its  stu- 
pendous movements  and  beautiful  harmony,  that  with  his 
whole  mind  and  heart  he  would  exclaim,  "  An  undevout 
astronomer  is  mad  !  " 

One  of  the  most  important  of  all  the  consequences 
which  have  yet  resulted  from  a  recognition  of  the  exist- 
ence of  individual  man  as  a  being  of  rights  and  duties, 
has  been  the  inquiry,  what  are  his  attributes;  what  re- 
lation does  he  bear  to  other  parts  of  the  universe ;  that 
is,  what  special  adaptation  and  fitness  is  there  in  his  con- 
stitution to  the  material  world,  to  filial,  fraternal,  conju- 
gal, parental  relations,  to  society,  to  his  Maker ;  how  far 
can  any  one  of  these  tendencies  be  carried  without  en- 


COMMON-SCHOOL   JOURNAL.  19 

croaching  upon  the  rightful  province  of  others ;  and  what 
are  the  specific  consequences  of  the  undue  indulgence  or 
neglect  of  any  one  of  them?  From  this  examination,  a 
beam  of  light  has  been  thrown  directly  upon  the  subject 
of  education.  Among  the  ancients,  physical  strength 
was  in  great  demand.  The  wars  they  were  forever 
waging  required  corporeal  vigor,  a  power  of  bodily  en- 
durance, and  that  thoughtless  bravery  which  springs 
from  the  animal  nature,  rather  than  from  the  moral  attri- 
butes. Hence  the  invigoration  of  the  body  was  their 
paramount  object ;  and  civic  games,  national  rewards,  and 
honors,  all  tended  to  rear  a  race  of  vigorous  animals 
rather  than  of  exalted  men.  Except  at  some  Augustan 
epoch,  the  greatness  which  was  admired  and  emulated  was 
that  of  the  body  and  not  of  the  soul.  The  word  which 
the  Romans  used  to  express  "  virtue  "  was  that  which 
originally  signified  "valor."  Hercules  was  deified  be- 
cause of  the  strong  muscles  in  his  arms  and  legs,  and  the 
Israelites  proclaimed  Saul  their  king,  by  acclamation,  be- 
cause he  was  taller  by  a  head  and  neck  than  any  other 
of  the  people.  The  opposite  extreme  has  prevailed  in 
modern  times.  Our  mark  has  been  to  cultivate  the 
powers  of  the  mind,  forgetful  of  the  body  —  as  though 
we  were  disembodied  spirits  already  ;  —  and  among  the 
mental  powers,  to  develop  and  invigorate  the  intellect, 
rather  than  to  regulate  those  appetites  and  affections 
upon  which  so  vast  a  proportion  of  all  individual  and 
social  welfare  rests.  Each  system  is  partially  right; 
each  is  mainly  wrong.  Each  has  an  element  of  truth  in 
it,  upon  which  its  advocates  could  stand,  to  defend  the 
attendant  errors.  In  the  education  of  a  human  being, 
all  his  powers  are  to  be  regarded.  When  the  perfection 
of  a  work  depends  upon  the  proportion  and  harmony  of 
its  parts,  the  absence  of  any  part  defeats  the  whole  ;  and 


20  PROSPECTUS   OF  THE 

this  is  a  reason  why  the  most  civilized  people  have  fallen 
so  immeasurably  below  an  attainable  point  of  elevation. 
One  of  the  greatest  contributions  of  science  to  the  world 
is  the  clearness,  the  distinctness,  with  which  the  details 
of  the  idea  have  been  brought  out,  and  made,  as  it  were, 
visible  and  tangible,  that  man  is  a  being,  not  created  for 
one  duty,  one  enjoyment,  one  relation  only,  but  for  many 
duties,  many  enjoyments,  and  many  relations  ;  that  he  is 
endowed  by  his  Maker  with  distinct  original  capacities 
and  powers,  by  which  he  is  fitted  for  the  manifold  pur- 
poses of  his  being ;  that  these  capacities  and  powers  are 
neither  equal  in  authority,  nor  is  their  gratification  at- 
tended with  equal  quantities  of  enjoyment,  but  that  they 
rise  in  authority  and  in  their  power  of  bestowing  pleas- 
ure, according  to  a  graduated  scale,  from  those  animal 
gratifications  which  we  hold  in  common  with  the  brutes, 
to  the  sublime  emotions,  by  which  we  may  become  kin- 
dred to  perfected  spirits.  They  rise,  like  the  ladder  seen 
in  the  vision  of  the  patriarch,  which,  resting  on  earth, 
reached  heaven.  The  first  feeling  of  an  infant  after  birth 
ought  to  be  and  is  an  impulse  of  the  instinct  for  food, 
while  the  last  thought  of  a  dying  man  should  be  that  of 
a  life  well  spent  and  an  anticipation  of  a  better  existence. 
How  near  to  each  other  are  these  extremes  in  point  of 
time ;  how  infinitely  remote  in  character  !  To  prepare 
the  human  beings  who  are  coming  into  this  world,  as  far 
as  human  means  can  do  it,  to  pass  from  one  of  these 
points  to  the  other,  is  the  work  of  Education. 

Whatever  of  this  noble  work  is  within  the  compass  of 
human  powers,  is  to  be  accomplished  through  an  investi- 
gation of  principles,  and  a  skilful  application  of  them  to 
practice,  even  in  their  minutest  details,  however  appar- 
ently trivial  and  insignificant.  The  type  and  paper  had 
first  to  be  mechanically  prepared,  whereby  even  the 
Gospels  have  come  to  us. 


COMMON-SCHOOL   JOURNAL.  21 

Our  limits  permit  only  a  brief  reference  to  the  classes 
of  means  by  which  the  objects  of  education  are  attain- 
able. In  treating  of  education,  in  modern  times,  it  has 
become  as  customary  to  classify  its  departments  under 
the  three  heads  of  Physical,  Intellectual,  and  Moral  or 
Religious,  as  it  is  in  geographical  treatises  to  consider 
the  earth  under  the  natural  divisions  of  continents,  oceans, 
islands,  &c.  We  shall  offer  a  few  remarks  under  each 
of  these  heads. 

When  physical  education  is  mentioned,  that  is  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  laws  by  which  health  and  strength  are  at- 
tained and  preserved,  many  people  start  and  ask  in 
surprise  whether  every  man  is  to  be  a  physician.  The 
answer  to  this  is  easy.  Physicians  must  understand  the 
laws  and  symptoms  of  the  diseased  body.  It  is  enough 
for  common  men  to  understand  the  laws  and  functions  of 
the  healthy  body.  The  conditions  of  health  are  few, 
simple,  intelligible.  The  action  of  disease  is  intricate 
and  infinite.  Anybody  is  competent  to  a  knowledge  of 
the  former.  After  so  many  lives  of  study  and  experience, 
the  latter  is  still  an  imperfect  science.  That  knowledge 
respecting  air,  exercise,  dress,  and  diet,  which  is  requi- 
site for  the  preservation  of  health,  may  be  acquired  with 
a  far  less  amount  of  attention  and  expense,  than  are  com- 
monly necessary  in  a  three-months'  sickness;  while  a 
physician  has  to  learn  the  endless  catalogue  of  diseases 
and  the  infinite  varieties  of  pain,  together  with  the  prop- 
erties and  applications  of  a  catalogue  of  supposed  reme- 
dies equally  endless. 

The  body  is  not  only  the  instrument  through  which 
the  mind  operates,  but  it  is  the  first  and  only  one  through 
which  the  mind  can  act  upon  any  other  instrument,  pro- 
vided for  it  by  science  or  art.  Hence  the  highest  powers 
of  mind,  with  the  most  perfect  external  instruments  all 


22  PROSPECTUS   OF   THE 

around  it,  and  the  noblest  sphere  of  action  before  it,  may 
be  baffled  through  the  defects  of  that  intermediate  in- 
strument the  body.  Prom  an  ignorant  violation  of  the 
simple  laws  of  health,  how  many  young  men  sicken  and 
die,  after  having  incurred  the  expense  and  volunteered 
the  labor  necessary  to  qualify  them  for  usefulness  and 
honor ;  like  frail  barks,  sinking  in  the  ocean  at  the  first 
approach  of  the  storm,  and  carrying  down  the  costly 
freight  with  which  they  were  laden  !  Who  that  has 
reached  middle  life  has  not  seen  many  of  the  friends  wfTo 
started  with  him  under  the  happiest  auguries  of  success, 
broken  down  in  their  career  ;  —  not  falling  nobly  in  the 
iace,  but  ignobly  perishing  by  the  wayside  and  far  from 
the  goal  of  duty  ?  Mental  power  is  so  dependent  for  its 
manifestation  on  physical  power,  that  we  deem  it  not  ex- 
travagant to  say,  that  if,  amongst  those  who  lead  seden- 
tary lives,  physical  power  could  be  doubled,  their  mental 
power  would  be  doubled  also.  The  health  and  constitu- 
tional vigor  of  a  people  is  a  blessing  not  to  be  lost  — 
certainly  not  to  be  regained  —  in  a  day.  Not  only  do 
bodily  fragility  and  incapacity  of  endurance  diminish  the 
available  powers  of  the  intellect,  but  the  perpetual  pres- 
ence of  pain,  the  depressing  sensations  of  diseases,  not 
acute,  tend  to  impair  the  efficient  impulses  of  virtue  and 
to  undermine  the  foundations  of  moral  character.  Grad- 
ually and  imperceptibly  a  race  may  physically  deteriorate, 
until  their  bodies  shall  degenerate  into  places,  Avhich, 
without  being  wholly  untenantable,  are  still  wholly  unfit 
to  keep  a  soul  in. 

A  proper  intellectual  education  begins  with  a  cultiva- 
tion of  the  senses.  Everybody  knows  the  vast  difference 
which  exists  between  different  men,  in  the  quickness 
with  which  they  catch  the  qualities  of  things,  and  the 
fidelity  with  which  they  are  able  to  recall  their  impres- 


COMMON-SCHOOL   JOURNAL.  23 

sions.  The  exquisite  sense  of  touch  acquired  by  the 
blind,  of  sight  acquired  by  the  deaf  and  dumb,  shows  at 
once  what  those  senses  are  capable  of  accomplishing, 
and  how  far  the  mass  of  the  community  fall  short  of  what 
they  might  acquire.  The  ideas  excited  in  the  mind  by 
means  of  the  senses  constitute  at  least  the  main  portion 
of  the  elements  of  subsequent  reasoning.  If  we  may  use 
an  artisan's  comparison,  the  senses  bring  a  large  part  of 
the  rough  stock  or  raw  material  into  the  mind,  after- 
wards to  be  worked  up  by  the  reason  into  solid  and  use- 
ful productions.  And  as  no  skill  of  the  workman,  though 
it  rise  to  infinite,  can  make  a  durable  and  perfect  fabric 
from  worthless  substances,  so  the  noblest  intellect  ever 
created  will  produce  only  erroneous  results,  if  acting 
upon  a  store  of  false  perceptions. 

In  a  volume  of  the  Historical  Collections,  there  is  pre- 
served a  map  of  what  now  constitutes  the  territory  of 
Maine  and  Massachusetts,  which  was  published  by  Capt. 
John  Smith,  in  London,  in  1614,  under  the  express 
authority  of  Prince  Charles.  In  that  map  Boston  is 
placed  about  twenty  leagues  north  of  Charles  River, 
Salem  about  twelve  leagues  south  of  Boston,  and  Cam- 
bridge more  than  thirty  leagues  north  of  Salem.  The 
map  represents  the  distance  between  Boston  and  Plym- 
outh to  be  about  ninety  miles.  Now  suppose  any  one 
were  to  confide  in  the  correctness  of  that  map,  and  go 
twelve  leagues  south  of  Boston  to  find  Salem,  or  thirty 
leagues  north  of  Salem  to  visit  Cambridge.  Yet  the 
mischief  caused  by  getting  such  erroneous  ideas  into  the 
mind,  is  no  adequate  representation  of  the  mischief,  and 
often  ruin,  of  acquiring  wrong  notions  on  a  thousand 
subjects  of  practical  business  or  social  duty. 

The  next  office  of  the  intellect  is  to  observe  the  rela- 
tions which  exist  between  objects,  and  how  they  may  be 


24  PROSPECTUS   OF  THE 

made  subservient  to  human  welfare.  Innumerable  as 
are  the  individual  objects  around  us,  the  relations  be- 
tween them  and  our  personal  relations  to  them  are  in- 
definitely more  numerous.  Hence  it  is  that  not  u  waking 
hour  passes,  during  the  whole  course  of  our  lives,  which 
does  not  require  an  observation  of  the  things  around  us, 
and  an  exercise  of  judgment,  either  in  adjusting  them  to 
our  condition,  or  our  condition  to  theirs.  Let  us  illus- 
trate this  by  a  supposition.  The  architect  sits  musing 
in  his  office.  He  is  arranging  in  his  mind  the  ideas  of 
all  the  different  parts  of  a  perfect  edifice,  and,  one  after 
another,  they  rise  and  take  their  proper  places  in  his 
imagination,  until  the  mental  archetype  stands  forth  in 
fair  proportions  from  the  foundation  to  the  cope-stone. 
Then  a  thousand  instruments,  and  hands  and  limbs, 
which  are  but  instruments,  are  put  in  motion :  the  stone 
comes  from  the  quarry,  the  wood  from  the  forest,  the 
iron  from  the  earth ;  the  soft  clay  becomes  solid  in  the 
bricks,  and  the  solid  limestone  soft  for  the  mortar ; 
the  sand  is  turned  into  glass ;  a  change  is  wrought  in  the 
form  and  place  of  many  thousand  things ;  and  in  a  few 
months,  that  image,  which  the  musing  architect  had  in 
his  mind,  has  taken  body  and  form,  and  has  become  the 
admiration  of  every  beholder  and  a  home  for  many  gen- 
erations. Yet  in  all  the  countless  operations  of  the  work, 
each  one  of  which  demanded  the  constant  aid  of  the  per- 
ceptive and  judging  powers,  not  a  single  mistake  could 
have  been  committed  without  retarding  the  completion 
or  impairing  the  perfections  of  the  structure.  And  so  in 
all  the  businesses  of  life,  —  in  agriculture,  arts,  com- 
merce, government ;  in  all  the  sacredness  of  domestic  and 
social  relations ;  in  fine,  wherever  we  touch  any  part  of 
the  material  or  spiritual  universe,  —  the  possession  and 
the  exercise  of  a  sound  intellect  are  necessary,  or  mis- 


COMMON-SCHOOL   JOURNAL.  25 

take,  discomfiture,  ruin,  misery,  will  thwart  and  frustrate 
our  plans.  Who  can  think,  without  anxiety,  of  commit- 
ting interests,  infinite  in  number  and  immeasurable  in 
importance,  to  a  generation  with  perverted  or  unculti- 
vated intellects? 

But  the  highest  function  of  the  intellect  is  that  of  dis- 
covering the  Laws  which  the  Creator  has  impressed 
upon  every  work  of  his  hands.  A  superficial  survey  of 
the  operations  of  nature  and  events  of  life  might  lead 
one  to  infer  that  they  are  unregulated, —  the  produ-fction 
of  chance,  —  thrown  out  promiscuously,  without  regard 
to  order  or  system,  —  instead  of  being  certain  results  of 
immutable  principles.  On  the  contrary,  one  of  the  most 
striking  manifestations  of  divine  wisdom  seems  to  be, 
that  each  part  of  the  creation  is  endued  with  a  definite 
nature,  has  its  appropriate  properties  and  uses,  and  is 
made  subject  to  such  invariable  laws,  that  the  same  cir- 
cumstances will  always  produce  the  same  results,  and 
different  circumstances  different  results.  These  laws,  so 
far  as  discovered,  constitute  the  body  of  human  science  ; 
so  far  as  undiscovered,  a  noble  field  for  intellectual  labor. 
They  are  one  great  element  in  the  superiority  of  civilized 
man.  We  know  the  laws  by  which  the  pathless  ocean 
can  be  traversed,  so  that  a  navigator  will  leave  one  of 
our  ports,  and  strike  the  narrowest  inlet  on  the  other 
side  of  the  globe.  We  know  thousands  of  those  laws  by 
which  the  earth  yields  her  increase,  and  by  which  her 
varied  productions  are  changed  into  innumerable  forms, 
to  subserve  the  comfort  and  happiness  of  man.  We  are 
forever  encompassed  by  these  laws,  —  equally  in  the 
most  trivial  and  the  most  momentous  concerns  of  life. 
We  never  take  a  step,  or  breathe  a  breath,  or  form  a  reso- 
lution, but  they  attach  to  the  act,  and  affix  their  conse- 
quences. Nor,  in  one  sense,  does  it  matter  whether  we 


26  PROSPECTUS   OP   THE 

know  them  or  not.  They  affix  the  appropriate  results  to 
ignorance  as  well  as  to  wisdom,  to  involuntary  as  well  as 
to  voluntary  infringements.  The  fire  will  burn  the  finger 
of  the  innocent  infant  who  plays  with  it,  as  well  as  the 
body  of  the  Hindoo  widow  who  leaps  into  it  for  self-de- 
struction. How  indispensable  then  is  a  knowledge  of 
these  laws  !  How  long  should  we  remain  at  liberty,  and 
unpunished,  were  we  to  go  into  a  foreign  country  and 
proceed  at  once  to  the  gratification  of  our  desires,  with- 
out  Becoming  acquainted  with  its  laws?  We  come  into 
this  world,  as  into  a  strange  country,  ignorant  of  these 
infinitely  numerous  laws,  and  we  must  learn  and  obey 
them,  or  suffer  infinitely  numerous  penalties  for  their 
violation. 

All  the  plans  of  wise  men  are  founded  upon  the  as- 
sumption of  the  regularity  and  invariableness  of  Nature's 
laws.  We  may  rely  with  confidence  upon  their  fidelity, 
for  they  will  never  betray  us.  We  anticipate  the  course 
of  the  seasons,  and  spring,  summer,  autumn,  winter,  fol- 
low with  grateful  vicissitude.  We  foretell  the  daily  ap- 
parent revolution  of  the  sun,  and  it  never  fails  to  rise 
and  set  at  the  appointed  moment.  When  we  suffer  from 
the  irresistible  action  of  these  laws,  it  is  because  we  have 
not  yet  discovered  them,  or  are  wickedly  regardless  of 
them.  So  in  our  physical  and  moral  nature,  we  are  sub- 
ject to  the  laws  of  exercise,  temperance,  veracity,  justice, 
benevolence,  piety,  and  if  these  are  obeyed,  it  cannot  be 
ill  with  us.  In  the  midst  of  all  this  beauty  and  harmony, 
how  lamentable  it  is  to  find  in  the  houses  of  our  citizens, 
and  often  on  the  counters  of  our  bookstores,  stories  of 
ghosts  and  apparitions,  and  dream-books  and  fortune- 
tellers, by  which  the  most  trivial  occurrences  of  the  day 
or  the  incongruous  visions  of  the  night  are  held  to  be 
auguries  of  human  destiny  ;  filling  minds,  made  to  be 


COMMON-SCHOOL   JOURNAL.  27 

rational,  with  illusive  hopes  and  cruel  fears ;  going  back 
to  the  times  when  madmen  were  the  accredited  expound- 
ers of  Nature  ;  —  and  proving,  if  we  may  express  our- 
selves in  mercantile  phrase,  that  the  old  firm  of  Night 
and  Chaos  are  still  doing  an  extensive  business.  Intelli- 
gence is  the  only  weapon  wherewith  this  vermin  brood 
can  be  hunted.  The  philosophy  or  the  opinion,  which 
refers  events  that  are  within  our  control  to  an  agency 
beyond  it,  bereaves  man  of  a  power  graciously  conferred 
on  him  by  Heaven  for  the  promotion  of  his  welfare. 

On  these  momentous  subjects,  we  can  hardly  say  any 
thing  beyond  what  is  to  be  found  in  our  Prospectus, 
without  entering  fields  of  thought  which' it  is  here  im- 
possible to  traverse.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
scarcely  possible  even  to  mention  so  impulsive  a  theme, 
without  being  roused  to  expressions  in  attestation  of  its 
value.  What  deep  and  unfathomable  meaning  dwells  in 
the  words  veracity,  impartiality,  benevolence,  justice, 
duty  !  Attaching  to  us  in  our  earliest  childhood,  follow- 
ing us,  through  every  waking  moment  of  our  lives,  with 
the  imposition  of  ever-renewing  commands  ;  —  attaching 
to  us  in  the  narrowness  of  the  domestic  circle,  yet,  as 
our  knowledge  and  our  relations  expand  to  fill  up  larger 
and  larger  circles,  fastening  new  obligations  upon  us, 
commensurate  with  our  powers  of  performance  ;  —  in  this 
view,  the  all-infolding  law  of  morality  may  seem  to  be  a 
task  and  a  burden ;  but  when  we  perceive  its  consonance 
to  our  nature,  its  pure  and  inexhaustible  rewards  for 
obedience,  its  power  of  imparting  an  all-conquering 
energy,  wherever  loftiest  efforts  are  demanded,  we  must 
hail  its  authority  as  among  our  highest  honors  and  bless- 
ings. For  what  slaves  are  they,  over  whom  conscience 
is  not  supreme !  What  sovereignty  awaits  those  who 
yield  submission  to  its  dictates !  Never  since  the  crea- 


28  PROSPECTUS   OF   THE 

tion  of  man  has  there  been  a  nation  like  ours,  so  nursed 
in  its  infancy  by  the  smiles  of  Providence,  endued  with 
such  vigor  in  the  first  half-century  of  its  being,  and  made 
capable  in  its  advancing  years  at  once  of  rising  to  such 
unparalleled  power,  and  of  making  existence  so  rich  a 
boon  to  its  multitudinous  members.  For  this  very  rea- 
son, debasement  would  stand  in  appalling  contrast  with 
its  early  promises ;  and  if,  through  immorality,  it  inflict 
upon  itself  suicidal  wounds,  the  pangs  of  its  death-strug- 
gle will  be  terrible  in  proportion  to  the  vigor  of  its  frame 
and  the  tenacity  of  its  young  life.  It  has  been  well  said 
that  it  took  Rome  three  hundred  years  to  die.  Her 
giant  heart  still  beat,  though  corruption  festered  through 
all  her  members.  Fiercer  will  be  the  throes  and  deeper 
the  shame  of  this  young  republic,  if,  in  the  bright  morn- 
ing of  its  days,  and  enriched  with  all  the  beneficence  of 
heaven,  it  grows  wanton  in  its  strength,  and,  maddening 
itself  with  the  cup  of  vice,  perishes  basely  in  sight  of  its 
high  destiny. 

There  is  every  thing  in  our  institutions  to  give  (if  that 
were  possible)  even  an  artificial  and  extraneous  value  to 
upright  conduct,  to  nobleness  and  elevation  of  character. 
Our  institutions  demand  men,  in  whose  hearts  great 
thoughts  and  great  deeds  are  native,  spontaneous,  irre- 
pressible. And  if  we  do  not  have  a  generation  of  men 
whose  virtues  will  save  us,  we  shall  have  a  generation 
whose  false  pretensions  to  virtue  will  ruin  us.  In  a  state 
and  country  like  ours,  a  thousand  selfish  considerations 
tempt  men  to  become  hypocrites  and  to  put  on  the  out- 
ward guises  of  morality.  Ambition  may  counsel  that 
honors  are  most  easily  won  through  honest  seemings. 
Avarice  may  covet  a  fair  reputation  for  its  pecuniary 
value.  Pride  and  vanity  may  look  for  regard  without 
the  worth  which  alone  can  challenge  it.  But  all  such 


COMMON-SCHOOL   JOURNAL.  29 

supports  will  fail  in  the  hour  of  temptation.  They  have 
no  depth  of  root  in  the  moral  sentiments.  The  germs  of 
morality  must  be  planted  in  the  moral  nature  of  children 
at  an  early  period  of  their  life.  In  that  genial  soil  they 
will  flourish  and  gather  strength  from  surer  and  deeper 
sources  than  those  of  time-serving  policy  ;  like  those  pas- 
ture oaks  we  see  scattered  about  the  fields  of  the  farm- 
ers, which,  striking  their  roots  downward  into  the  earth 
far  as  their  topmost  branches  ascend  into  the  air,  draw 
their  nourishment  from  perennial  fountains,  and  thereby 
preserve  their  foliage  fresh  and  green,  through  seasons 
of  fiery  drought,  when  all  surrounding  vegetation  is 
scorched  to  a  cinder. 

The  diversity  of  religious  doctrines,  prevalent  in  our 
community,  would  render  it  difficult  to  inculcate  any 
religious  truths,  through  the  pages  of  a  periodical  de- 
signed for  general  circulation,  were  it  not  for  two  rea- 
sons :  first,  that  the  points  on  which  different  portions  of 
a  Christian  community  differ  among  themselves  are  far 
less  numerous  than  those  on  which  they  agree;  and, 
secondly,  were  it  not  also  true,  that  a  belief  in  those 
points  in  which  they  all  agree,  constitutes  the  best  pos- 
sible preparation  for  each  to  proceed  in  adding  those  dis- 
tinctive particulars,  deemed  necessary  to  a  complete  and 
perfect  faith.  A  work,  devoted  to  education,  which  did 
not  recognize  the  truth  that  we  were  created  to  be  re- 
ligious beings,  would  be  as  though  we  were  to  form  a 
human  body  forgetting  to  put  in  a  heart. 

While,  therefore,  we  rejoice  that  each  member  of  this 
Christian  community  possesses  the  Protestant  liberty  of 
adopting  and  avowing  such  peculiar  doctrines  as  best 
approve  themselves  to  his  own  mind,  we  shall  open  our 
columns  to  them  neither  for  defence  nor  confutation ;  — 
contenting  ourselves,  in  this  sphere  of  duty,  with  unfold- 


30  PROSPECTUS   OF   THE 

ing  and  applying  the  great  principles  of  love  to  God  and 
love  to  man,  on  which  "  hang  all  the  law  and  the  pro- 
phets." We  have  no  fear  of  giving  offence  to  any  sect, 
by  teaching  children  to  do  unto  others  as  they  would 
that  others  should  do  unto  them. 

We  have  sketched  an  imperfect  outline  of  what  a  man 
should  do,  and  what  he  should  not  do ;  so  that  in  educat- 
ing children  they  may  be  prepared  to  perform  the  one 
and  discard  the  other.  The  great  events  of  life  are  the 
consequences  which  flow  from  precedent  means.  If  we 
would  have  improved  men,  we  must  have  improved 
means  of  educating  children.  By  using  the  appropriate 
means,  it  is  perfectly  practicable  to  have  a  community, 
whose  main  body  shall  march  forward  in  the  line  of  in- 
dustry, prosperit}7-,  and  uprightness,  while  a  few  strag- 
glers or  deserters  only  shall  leave  its  compact  ranks  to 
enlist  under  the  banners  of  vice  ;  or,  by  discarding  the 
appropriate  means,  it  is  perfectly  easy  to  reverse  this 
condition,  so  that  the  main  body  of  society  shall  be  the 
abandoned,  the  sensual,  the  profligate,  with  only  here  and 
there  an  heroic  exception,  fleeing  apostate  ranks.  Of  all 
the  means  in  our  possession,  the  common  school  has  pre- 
cedence, because  of  its  universality ;  because  it  is  the 
only  reliance  of  the  vast  majority  of  children  ;  because  it 
gives  them  the  earliest  direction,  and  an  impulse  whose 
force  is  seldom  spent  until  death.  Whatever  advances 
the  common  school,  then,  will  enhance  individual  and 
social  well-being  for  generations  to  come.  History  must 
be  written  and  read  with  different  emotions  of  joy  or 
grief,  as  they  rise  or  decline  ;  and  individual  minds  will 
bear  ineffaceable  traces  of  their  good  or  evil  inscriptions. 
As,  to  every  great  river,  the  confluence  of  a  thousand 
streams  are  necessary,  so  every  great  result  is  only  the 
sum  —  the  product  —  the  gathering  together  —  of  a 


COMMON-SCHOOL   JOURNAL.  31 

countless  number  of  minute  operations.  "We  would  go 
back,  therefore,  to  the  fountain  of  youth.  We  would  act 
upon  the  great  truth,  which  led  one  of  the  master  paint- 
ers of  Italy  to  begin,  in  his  art,  back  at  the  very  grinding 
and  mixing  of  his  paints,  that  no  unskilfulness  in  the  pre- 
paration of  the  colors  should  be  found  on  completion  to 
have  marred  the  beauty  or  dimmed  the  clearness  of 
works  which  were  to  challenge  the  admiration  of  pos- 
terity. Hence,  to  improve  the  places  where  the  business 
of  education  is  carried  on  ;  to  better  what  may  be  called 
their  outward  and  material  organization ;  to  attend  to 
arrangements  merely  mechanical ;  to  adapt  with  a  nicer 
adjustment  the  implements  and  the  processes,  and  to 
arrange  more  philosophically  the  kind  and  the  succession 
of  studies  ;  to  increase  the  qualifications  and  the  rewards 
of  instructors,  and  to  advance  them  to  that  social  posi- 
tion they  deserve  to  hold ;  to  convince  the  community 
that  their  highest  interests  are  dependent  upon  the  cul- 
ture of  their  children,  —  is  the  sphere  of  action  to  which 
this  periodical  is  dedicated. 

CITIZENS  OP  MASSACHUSETTS,  —  Will  you  proifer  your 
aid  for  the  promotion  of  this  object  ?  It  appeals  to  your 
patriotism.  It  appeals  to  your  philanthropy.  None  of 
you  is  so  high  as  not  to  need  the  education  of  the  people 
as  a  safeguard ;  none  of  you  so  low  as  to  be  beneath  its 
uplifting  power.  To  be  emulous  of  the  good  name  of 
your  ancestors  may  be  an  honor  ;  but  to  be  devoted  to 
the  welfare  of  your  posterity  is  a  duty.  The  one  may 
be  founded  on  selfishness ;  the  other  is  allied  to  religion. 
We  invoke  your  co-operation,  not  so  much  for  the  out- 
ward and  perishable  good  of  your  children,  as  for  their 
inward  and  abiding  good  ;  —  not  for  a  temporary  object, 
but  for  the  interminable  future.  We  seek  less  for  their 
external  and  mutable  interests,  than  for  the  establish- 


32        PROSPECTUS   OF   THE   COMMON-SCHOOL   JOURNAL. 

raent  of  those  great  principles  which  lie  under  the  whole 
length  of  existence.  Let  them  be  educated  to  be  above 
pride  as  well  as  above  abasement ;  to  be  the  master, 
instead  of  the  slave,  of  accident  and  of  circumstance  ;  to 
live  less  in  the  region  of  the  senses  and  appetites,  and 
more  in  the  serener  and  happier  sphere  of  intellect,  of 
morals,  and  religion.  Then,  though  you  leave  them  no 
patrimony,  they  will  never  be  poor ;  though  temporal 
adversity  befall  them,  they  cannot  be  deprived  of  the 
substantial  part  of  all  happiness. 

NOVEMBER,  1838. 


AUTHOR'S    PREFACE 


VOLUME   OF  LECTURES  NOW  REPUBLISHED. 


THE  Act  creating  the  Massachusetts  Board  of  Edu- 
cation was  passed  April  20, 1837.  In  June  follow- 
ing, the  Board  was  organized,  and  its  Secretary 
chosen.  The  duties  of  the  Secretary,  as  expressed 
in  the  Act,  are,  to  "  collect  information  of  the  actual 
condition  and  efficiency  of  the  Common  Schools, 
and  other  means  of  popular  education ;  and  to 
diffuse  as  widely  as  possible,  throughout  every 
part  of  the  Commonwealth,  information  of  the  most 
approved  and  successful  methods  of  arranging  the 
studies,  and  conducting  the  education  of  the  young, 
to  the  end  that  all  children  in  this  Commonwealth, 
who  depend  upon  Common  Schools  for  instruction, 
may  have  the  best  education  which  those  schools 
can  be  made  to  impart," 

The  Board,  immediately  after  its  organization, 
issued  an  "  Address  to  the  Public,"  inviting  the 
friends  of  education  to  assemble  in  convention,  in 
their  respective  counties,  in  the  ensuing  autumn  ; 
and  the  Secretary  was  requested  to  be  present  at 


33 


34  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE. 

those  conventions,  both  for  the  purpose  of  obtain- 
ing information  in  regard  to  the  condition  of  the 
schools,  and  of  explaining  to  the  public  what  were 
supposed  to  be  the  leading  motives  and  objects  of 
the  Legislature  in  creating  the  Board. 

The  author  of  the  following  Lectures  was  a 
member  of  the  Legislature  when  the  act  establish- 
ing the  Board  was  passed ;  and  he  was  intimately^ 
acquainted  with  the  general  views  of  its  projectors 
and  advocates.  At  that  time,  however,  the  idea 
never  entered  his  mind  that  he  should  be  even  a 
candidate  for  the  Secretaryship ;  but  when  the 
Board  was  organized,  and  the  station  was  offered 
him,  he  was  induced  to  accept  it ;  —  not  so  much 
from  any  supposed  fitness  for  the  office,  as  from 
the  congeniality  of  its  duties  with  all  his  tastes  and 
predilections,  and  because  he  thought  that  what- 
ever of  industry,  or  of  capacity  for  usefulness,  he 
might  possess,  could  be  exerted  more  beneficially 
to  his  fellow-men  in  this  situation  than  in  any 
other.  On  accepting  the  appointment,  therefore, 
it  became  his  duty  to  meet  the  county  conventions, 
which  were  held  throughout  the  State,  in  the 
autumn  of  1837  ;  and  the  first  of  the  following 
lectures  was  prepared  for  those  occasions.  Its 
object  was  to  sketch  a  rapid  outline  of  deficiencies 
to  be  supplied,  and  of  objects  to  be  pursued,  in 
relation  to  the  Common-School  system  of  Massa- 
chusetts. 

In  the  session  of  1838,  the  Legislature  provided 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE.  35 

that  a  Common-School  convention  should  be  held, 
each  year,  in  each  county  of  the  Commonwealth, 
and  that  the  Secretary  should  be  present  at  every 
convention.  This  law  continued  in  force  until  the 
year  1842,  when  it  was  repealed.  During  the  first 
five  years,  therefore,  after  the  establishment  of  the 
Board,  a  Common-School  convention  was  annually 
held  in  each  county  in  the  Commonwealth ;  and 
in  some  of  the  large  counties  two  or  more  such 
conventions  were  held.  The  Secretary  made  his 
annual  circuit  through  the  State,  and  was  present 
at  them  all;  and  the  first  five  of  the  following 
lectures  were  respectively  delivered  before  the  an- 
nual conventions.  The  lecture  on  "  District-School 
Libraries  "  was  prepared  in  view  of  the  great  defi- 
ciency of  books  in  our  towns,  suitable  for  the  read- 
ing of  children ;  and  was  delivered  before  Teach- 
ers' Associations,  Lyceums,  &c.,  in  different  parts  of 
the  State.  In  the  year  1839,  a  number  of  the 
friends  of  education  in  Boston  instituted  a  course 
of  lectures  for  the  female  teachers  in  the  city,  and 
the  lecture  on  "  School  Punishments  "  was  deliv- 
ered, as  one  of  that  course. 

On  almost  all  the  occasions  above  referred  to,  a 
copy  of  the  lecture  delivered  was  requested  for  the 
press  ;  but  the  inadequacy  of  the  views  presented, 
when  compared  with  the  magnitude  and  grandeur 
of  the  subject  discussed,  always  induced  the  author 
(except  in  regard  to  the  first  lecture,  which  was 
printed  in  1840,  in  order  to  make  known,  more 


36  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE. 

generally,  the  objects  which  the  Board  had  in 
view)  to  decline  a  compliance  with  the  request. 
In  the  month  of  May  last,  however,  the  Board  of 
Education,  by  a  special  and  unanimous  vote,  re- 
quested him  to  prepare  a  volume  of  his  Lectures 
on  Education  for  the  press,  and  to  this  request  he 
has  now  acceded. 

In  preparing  this  volume,  the  author  was  led  to- 
doubt  whether  he  should  retain  those  portions  of 
the  lectures  which  contained  special  and  direct 
allusions  to  the  times  and  circumstances  in  which 
they  were  delivered ;  or  whether,  by  omitting  all 
reference  to  temporary  and  passing  events,  he 
should  publish  only  those  parts  in  which  an  at- 
tempt was  made  to  discuss  broad  and  general  prin- 
ciples, or  to  enlist  parental,  patriotic,  and  religious 
motives  in  behalf  of  the  cause.  He  has  been  in- 
duced to  adopt  the  first  part  of  the  alternative, 
both  because  itjQresents  the  lectures  as  they  were 
delivered,  and  because  it  gives  an  aspect  of  practi- 
cal reform,  rather  than  of  theoretic  speculation  to 
the  work. 

The  author  begs  leave  to  add,  that,  as  the  lec- 
tures were  designed  for  popular  and  promiscuous 
audiences,  and  pertained  to  a  cause  in  which  but 
very  little  general  interest  was  felt,  he  was  con- 
strained not  only  to  confine  himself  to  popular  top- 
ics, but  also  to  treat  them,  as  far  as  he  was  able,  in 
a  popular  manner.  The  more  didactic  expositions 
of  the  merits  of  the  great  cause  of  Education,  and 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE.  37 

some  of  the  relations  which  that  cause  holds  to  the 
interests  of  civilization  and  human  progress,  he 
has  endeavored  to  set  forth  in  his  Annual  Reports ; 
while  his  more  detailed  and  specific  views,  in  re- 
gard to  modes  and  processes  of  instruction  and 
training,  may  be  found  in  the  volumes  of  the 
Common-School  Journal.  Each  one  of  these  three 
channels  of  communication  with  the  public  he  has 
endeavored  to  use  for  the  exposition  of  a  particular 
class  of  the  views  and  motives  belonging  to  the 
comprehensive  subject  of  education. 

Justice  to  himself  compels  the  author  to  add 
another  remark,  although  of  an  unpleasant  char- 
acter. Some  of  the  following  lectures  have  been 
delivered  not  only  before  different  audiences  in 
Massachusetts,  but  in  other  States ;  and,  in  several 
instances,  the  author  has  seen,  not  only  illustra- 
tions and  clauses,  but  whole  sentences  taken  bodily 
from  the  lectures,  and  transferred  to  works  subse- 
quently published.  Should  cases  of  this  kind  be 
noticed  by  the  reader,  he  is  requested  to  compare 
dates  before  deciding  the  question  of  plagiarism. 

BOSTON,  March,  1845. 

41**  f  i  >  s\ 
. ;,>  j  8  9 


LECTURES  ON  EDUCATION. 


LECTURE   I. 

MEANS  AND   OBJECTS  OF  COMMON-SCHOOL  EDUCATION. 

GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  CONVENTION  : — 

IN  pursuance  of  notice,  contained  in  a  circular  letter, 
lately  addressed  to  the  school  committees  and  friends  of 
Education,  in  this  county,  I  now  appear  before  you,  as 
the  Secretary  of  the  Massachusetts  Board  of  Education. 
That  Board  was  constituted  by  an  Act  of  the  Legislature, 
passed  April  20,  1837.  It  consists  of  the  Governor  and 
Lieutenant  Governor  of  the  Commonwealth,  for  the  time 
being, — who  are  members  ex  officiis, —  and  of  eight  other 
gentlemen,  appointed  by  the  Executive,  with  the  advice 
and  consent  of  the  Council.  The  object  of  the  Board  is, 
by  extensive  correspondence,  by  personal  interviews,  by 
the  development  and  discussion  of  principles,  to  collect 
such  information,  on  the  great  subject  of  Education,  as 
now  lies  scattered,  buried,  and  dormant ;  and  after  digest- 
ing, and,  as  far  as  possible,  systematizing  and  perfecting 
it,  to  send  it  forth  again  to  the  extremest  borders  of  the 
State; — so  that  all  improvements  which  are  local,  may 
be  enlarged  into  universal ;  that  what  is  now  transitory 
and  evanescent,  may  be  established  in  permanency  ;  and 
that  correct  views,  on  this  all-important  subject,  may  be 

39 


40  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS   OP 

multiplied  by  the  number  of  minds  capable  of   under- 
standing them. 

To  accomplish  the  object  of  their  creation,  however, 
the  Board  are  clothed  with  no  power,  either  restraining 
or  directory.  If  they  know  of  better  modes  of  education, 
they  have  no  authority  to  enforce  their  adoption.  Nor 
have  they  any  funds  at  their  disposal.  Even  the  services 
of  the  members  are  gratuitously  rendered.  Without 
authority,  then,  to  command,  and  without  money  to  re-. 
mimerate  or  reward,  their  only  resources,  the  only  sinews 
of  their  strength,  are,  their  power  of  appealing  to  an 
enlightened  community,  to  rally  for  the  promotion  of  its 
dearest  interests. 

Unless,  therefore,  the  friends  of  Education,  in  different 
parts  of  the  State,  shall  proffer  their  cordial  and  strenu- 
ous co-operation,  it  is  obvious,  that  the  great  purposes 
for  which  the  Board  was  constituted,  can  never  be  accom- 
plished. Some  persons,  indeed,  have  suggested,  that  the 
Secretary  of  the  Board  should  visit  the  schools,  individ- 
ually, and  impart  such  counsel  and  encouragement  as  he 
might  be  able  to  do;  —  not  reflecting  that  such  is  their 
number  and  the  shortness  of  the  time  during  which  they 
are  kept,  that,  if  he  were  to  allow  himself  but  one  day 
for  each  school,  to  make  specific  examinations  and  to  give 
detailed  instructions,  it  would  occupy  something  more 
than  sixteen  years  to  complete  the  circuit ;  —  while  the 
period,  between  the  ages  of  four  and  sixteen,  during  which 
our  children  usually  attend  school,  is  but  twelve  years  ; 
so  that,  before  the  Secretary  could  come  round  upon  his 
track  again,  one  entire  generation  of  scholars  would  have 
passed  away,  and  one-third  of  another.  At  his  quickest 
speed,  he  would  lose  sight  of  one-quarter  of  all  the  chil- 
dren in  the  State.  The  Board,  therefore,  have  no  voice, 
they  have  no  organ,  by  which  they  can  make  themselves 


COMMON-SCHOOL    EDUCATION.  41 

heard,  in  the  distant  villages  and  hamlets  of  this  land, 
where  those  juvenile  habits  are  now  forming,  where  those 
processes  of  thought  and  feeling  are,  now,  to-day,  matur- 
ing, which,  some  twenty  or  thirty  years  hence,  will  find 
an  arm,  and  become  resistless  might,  and  will  uphold,  or 
rend  asunder,  our  social  fabric.  The  Board  may, —  1 
trust  they  will, — be  able  to  collect  light  and  to  radiate 
it ;  but  upon  the  people,  upon  the  people,  will  still  rest  the 
great  and  inspiring  duty  of  prescribing  to  the  next  gen- 
eration what  their  fortunes  shall  be,  by  determining  in 
what  manner  they  shall  be  educated.  For  it  is  the  ances- 
tors of  a  people,  who  prepare  and  predetermine  all  the 
great  events  in  that  people's  history ;  —  their  posterity 
only  collect  and  read  them.  No  just  judge  will  ever  de- 
cide upon  the  moral  responsibility  of  an  individual,  with- 
out first  ascertaining  what  kind  of  parents  he  had ;  — 
nor  will  any  just  historian  ever  decide  upon  the  honor  or 
the  infamy  of  a  people,  without  placing  the  character  of 
its  ancestors  in  the  judgment-balance.  If  the  system  of 
national  instruction,  devised  and  commenced  by  Charle- 
magne, had  been  continued,  it  would  have  changed  the 
history  of  the  French  people.  Such  an  event  as  the 
French  Revolution  never  would  have  happened  with  free 
schools ;  any  more  than  the  American  Revolution  would 
have  happened  without  them.  The  mobs,  the  riots,  the 
burnings,  the  lynchings,  perpetrated  by  the  men  of  the 
present  day,  are  perpetrated,  because  of  their  vicious  or 
defective  education,  when  children.  We  see,  and  feel, 
the  havoc  and  the  ravage  of  their  tiger-passions,  now, 
when  they  are  full  grown  ;  but  it  was  years  ago  that  they 
were  whelped  and  suckled.  And  so,  too,  if  we  are  dere- 
lict from  our  duty,  in  this  matter,  our  children,  in  their 
turn,  will  suffer.  If  we  permit  the  vulture's  eggs  to  be 
incubated  and  hatched,  it  will  then  be  too  late  to  take 
care  of  the  lambs. 


42  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS    OF 

Some  eulogize  our  system  of  Popular  Education,  as 
though  worthy  to  be  universally  admired  and  imitated. 
Others  pronounce  it  circumscribed  in  its  action,  and  fee- 
ble, even  where  it  acts.  Let  us  waste  no  time  in  cornpos- 
,  ing  this  strife.  If  good,  let  us  improve  it ;  if  bad,  let  us 
reform  it.  It  is  of  human  institutions,  as  of  men,  —  not 
any  one  is  so  good  that  it  cannot  be  made  better ;  nor  so 
bad,  that  it  may  not  become  worse.  Our  system  of  edu- 
cation is  not  to  be  compared  with  those  of  other  states  or^ 
countries,  merely  to  determine  whether  it  may  be  a  little 
more  or  a  little  less  perfect  than  they  ;  but  it  is  to  be 
contrasted  with  our  highest  ideas  of  perfection  itself,  and 
then  the  pain  of  the  contrast  to  be  assuaged,  by  improving 
it,  forthwith  and  continually.  The  love  of  excellence 
looks  ever  upward  towards  a  higher  standard ;  it  is  unim- 
proving  pride  and  arrogance  only,  that  are  satisfied  with 
being  superior  to  a  lower.  No  community  should  rest 
,  contented  with  being  superior  to  other  communities,  while 
f>  it  is  inferior  to  its  own  capabilities.  And  such  are  the 
beneficent  ordinations  of  Providence,  that  the  very  thought 
of  improving  is  the  germination  of  improvement. 

The  science  and  the  art  of  Education,  like  every  thing 
human,  depend  upon  culture,  for  advancement.  And  they 
would  be  more  cultivated,  if  the  rewards  for  attention, 
and  the  penalties  for  neglect,  were  better  understood. 
When  effects  follow  causes, —  quick  as  thunder,  light- 
ning, —  even  infants  and  idiots  learn  to  beware ;  or  they 
act,  to  enjoy.  They  have  a  glimmer  of  reason,  sufficient, 
in  sucli  cases,  for  admonition,  or  impulse.  Now,  in  this 
world,  the  entire  succession  of  events,  which  fills  time 
and  makes  up  life,  is  nothing  but  causes  and  effects. 
These  causes  and  effects  are  bound  and  linked  together 
by  an  adamantine  law.  And  the  Deity  has  given  us 
power  over  the  effects,  by  giving  us  power  over  the  causes. 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  43 

This  power  consists  in  a  knowledge  of  the  connection 
established  between  causes  and  effects,  —  enabling  us  to 
foresee  the  future  consequences  of  present  conduct.  If 
you  show  to  me  a  handful  of  perfect  seeds,  I  know,  that, 
with  appropriate  culture,  those  seeds  will  produce  a 
growth  after  their  kind  ;  whether  it  be  of  pulse,  which  is 
ripened  for  human  use  in  a  month,  or  of  oaks,  whose  life- 
time is  centuries.  So,  in  some  of  the  actions  of  men, 
consequences  follow  conduct  with  a  lockstep ;  in  others, 
the  effects  of  youthful  actions  first  burst  forth  as  from  a 
subterranean  current,  in  advanced  life.  In  those  great 
relations  which  subsist  between  different  generations, — 
between  ancestors  and  posterity,  —  effects  are  usually 
separated  from  their  causes  by  long  intervals  of  time. 
The  pulsations  of  a  nation's  heart  are  to  be  counted,  not 
by  seconds,  but  by  years.  Now,  it  is  in  this  class  of  cases, 
where  there  are  long  intervals  lying  between  our  conduct 
and  its  consequences  ;  where  one  generation  sows,  and 
another  generation  reaps ;  —  it  is  in  this  class  of  cases, 
that  the  greatest  and  most  sorrowful  of  human  errors 
originate.  Yet,  even  for  these,  a  benevolent  Creator  has 
supplied  us  with  an  antidote.  He  has  given  us  the  faculty 
of  reason,  whose  especial  office  and  function  it  is,  to  dis- 
cover the  connection  between  causes  and  effects  ;  and 
thereby  to  enable  us  so  to  regulate  the  causes  of  to-day, 
as  to  predestinate  the  effects  of  to-morrow.  In  the  eye 
of  reason,  causes  and  effects  exist  in  proximity,  —  in  jux- 
taposition. They  lie  side  by  side,  whatever  length  of 
time,  or  distance  of  space,  comes  in  between  them.  If  I 
am  guilty  of  an  act  or  a  neglect,  to-day,  which  will  cer- 
tainly cause  the  infliction  of  a  wrong,  it  matters  not 
whether  that  wrong  happens  on  the  other  side  of 
the  globe,  or  in  the  next  century.  Whenever  or 
wherever  it  happens,  it  is  mine ;  it  belongs  to  me ;  my 


44  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS    OF 

conscience  owns  it,  and  no  sophistry  can  give  me  absolu- 
tion. Who  would  think  of  acquitting  an  incendiary, 
because  the  train  which  he  had  laid  and  lighted,  first 
circuited  the  globe  before  it  reached  and  consumed  his 
neighbor's  dwelling?  From  the  nature  of  the  case,  in 
education,  the  effects  are  widely  separated  from  the  causes. 
They  happen  so  long  afterwards,  that  the  reason  of  the 
community  loses  sight  of  the  connection  between  them. 
It  does  not  bring  the  cause  and  the  effect  together,  and 
lay  them,  and  look  at  them,  side  by  side. 

If,  instead  of  twenty-one  years,  the  course  of  Nature 
allowed  but  twenty-one  days,  to  rear  an  infant  to  the  full 
stature  of  manhood,  and  to  sow  in  his  bosom  the  seeds 
of  unbounded  happiness  or  of  unspeakable  misery,  —  I 
suppose,  in  that  case,  the  merchant  would  abandon  his 
bargains,  and  the  farmer  would  leave  the  in-gathering  of 
his  harvest,  and  even  the  drunkard  would  hie  homeward 
from  the  midst  of  his  revel,  and  that  twenty-one  days 
would  be  spent,  without  much  sleep,  and  with  many 
prayers.  And  yet,  it  cannot  be  denied,  that  the  conse- 
quences of  a  vicious  education,  inflicted  upon  a  child,  are 
now  precisely  the  same  as  they  would  be,  if,  at  the  end  of 
twenty-one  days  after  an  infant's  birth,  his  tongue  were 
already  roughened  with  oaths  and  blasphemy  ;  or  he  were 
seen  skulking  through  society,  obtaining  credit  upon  false 
pretences,  or  with  rolls  of  counterfeit  bills  in  his  pocket ; 
or  were  already  expiating  his  offences  in  the  bondage  and 
infamy  of  a  prison.  And  the  consequences  of  a  virtuous 
education,  at  the  end  of  twenty-one  years,  are  now  pre- 
cisely the  same  as  they  would  be,  if,  at  the  end  of  twenty- 
one  days  after  his  birth,  the  infant  had  risen  from  his 
cradle  into  the  majestic  form  of  manhood,  and  were 
possessed  of  all  those  qualities  and  attributes,  which  a 
being  created  in  the  image  of  God  ought  to  have ;  —  with 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  45 

a  power  of  fifty  years  of  beneficent  labor  compacted  into 
his  frame  ;  — with  nerves  of  sympathy,  reaching  out  from 
his  own  heart  and  twining  around  the  heart  of  society, 
so  that  the  great  social  wants  of  men  should  be  a  part  of 
his  consciousness  ;  —  and  with  a  mind  able  to  perceive 
what  is  right,  prompt  to  defend  it,  or,  if  need  be,  to  die 
for  it.  It  ought  to  be  understood,  that  none  of  these  con- 
sequences become  any  the  less  certain,  because  they  are 
more  remote.  It  ought  to  be  universally  understood  and 
intimately  felt,  that,  in  regard  to  chUdren,all  precept  and 
example  ;  all  kindness  and  harshness ;  all  rebuke  and 
commendation  ;  all  forms,  indeed,  of  direct  or  indirect 
education,  affect  mental  growth,  just  as  dew,  and  sun, 
and  shower,  or  untimely  frost,  affect  vegetable  growth. 
Their  influences  are  integrated  and  made  one  with  the 
soul.  They  enter  into  spiritual  combination  with  it, 
never  afterwards  to  be  wholly  decompounded.  They  are 
like  the  daily  food  eaten  by  wild  game,  —  so  pungent  and 
saporific  in  its  nature,  that  it  flavors  every  fibre  of  their 
flesh,  and  colors  every  bone  in  their  body.  Indeed,  so 
pervading  and  enduring  is  the  effect  of  education  upon 
the  youthful  soul,  that  it  may  well  be  compared  to  a  cer- 
tain species  of  writing-ink,  whose  color,  at  first,  is  scarcely 
perceptible,  but  which  penetrates  deeper  and  grows  black- 
er by  age,  until,  if  you  consume  the  scroll  over  a  coal-fire, 
the  character  will  still  be  legible  in  the  cinders.  It  ought 
to  be  understood  and  felt,  that,  however  it  may  be  in  a 
i-ocial  or  jurisprudential  sense,  it  is  nevertheless  true,  in 
the  most  solemn  and  dread-inspiring  sense,  that,  by  an 
irrepealable  law  of  Nature,  the  iniquities  of  the  fathers  are 
still  visited  upon  the  children,  .unto  the  third  and  fourth 
generation.  Nor  do  the  children  suffer  for  the  iniquities 
only,  of  their  parents  ;  they  suffer  for  their  neglect  and 
even  for  their  ignorance.  Hence  I  have  always  admired 


46  MEANS  AND   OBJECTS   OF 

that  law  of  the  Icelanders,  by  which,  when  a  minor  child 
commits  an  offence,  the  courts  first  make  judicial  inquiry, 
whether  his  parents  have  given  him  a  good  education  ; 
and,  if  it  be  proved  they  have  not,  the  child  is  acquitted 
and  the  parents  are  punished.  In  both  the  old  Colonies 
of  Plymouth,  and  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  if  a  child,  over 
sixteen,  and  under  twenty-one  years  of  age,  committed  a 
certain  capital  offence  against  father  or  mother,  he  was 
allowed  to  arrest  judgment  of  death  upon  himself,  by. 
showing  that  his  parents,  in  the  language  of  the  law, 
"  had  been  very  unchristianly  negligent  in  his  education." 

How,  then,  are  the  purposes  of  education  to  be  accom- 
plished ?  However  other  worlds  may  be,  this  world  of 
ours  is  evidently  constructed  on  the  plan  of  producing 
ends  by  using  means.  Even  the  Deity,  with  his  Omni- 
science and  his  Omnipotence,  carries  forward  our  system, 
by  processes  so  minute,  and  movements  so  subtile,  as 
generally  to  elude  our  keenest  inspection.  He  might 
speak  all  the  harvests  of  the  earth,  and  all  the  races  of 
animals  and  of  men,  into  full-formed  existence,  at  a  word, 
and  yet  the  tree  is  elaborated  from  the  kernel,  and  the 
wing  from  the  chrysalis,  by  a  series  of  processes,  which 
occupies  years,  and  sometimes  centuries,  for  its  comple- 
tion. Education,  more  than  any  thing  else,  demands  not 
only  a  scientific  acquaintance  with  mental  laws,  but  the 
nicest  art  in  the  detail,  and  the  application  of  means,  for 
its  successful  prosecution  ;  because  influences,  impercep- 
tible in  childhood,  work  out  more  and  more  broadly  into 
beauty  or  deformity,  in  after-life.  No  unskilful  hand 
should  ever  play  upon  a  harp,  where  the  tones  are  left, 
forever,  in  the  strings. 

In  the  first  place,  the  best  methods  should  be  well 
ascertained  ;  in  the  second,  they  should  be  universally 
diffused.  .In  this  Commonwealth,  there  are  about  three 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  47 

thousand  Public  Schools,  in  all  of  which  the  rudiments 
of  knowledge  are  taught.  These  schools,  at  the  present 
time,  are  so  many  distinct,  independent  communities, 
each  being  governed  by  its  own  habits,  traditions,  and 
local  customs.  There  is  no  common,  superintending 
power  over  them ;  there  is  no  bond  of  brotherhood  or 
family  between  them.  They  are  strangers  and  aliens  to 
each  other.  The  teachers  are,  as  it  were,  embedded,  each 
hi  his  own  school  district,  and  they  are  yet  to  be  exca- 
vated and  brought  together,  and  to  be  established,  each 
as  a  polished  pillar  of  a  holy  temple.  As  the  system  is 
now  administered,  if  any  improvement  in  principles  or 
modes  of  teaching  is  discovered  by  talent  or  accident,  in 
one  school,  instead  of  being  published  to  the  world,  it 
dies  with  the  discoverer.  No  means  exist  for  multiplying 
new  truths,  or  even  for  preserving  old  ones.  A  gentle- 
man, filling  one  of  the  highest  civil  offices  in  this  Com- 
monwealth,—  a  resident  in  one  of  the  oldest  counties 
and  in  one  of  the  largest  towns  in  the  State,  —  a  sincere 
friend  of  the  cause  of  education,  —  recently  put  into  my 
hands  a  printed  report,  drawn  up  by  a  clergyman  of  high 
repute,  which  described,  as  was  supposed,  an  important 
improvement  in  relation  to  our  Common  -Schools,  and 
earnestly  enjoined  its  general  adoption,  when  it  happened 
to  be  within  my  own  knowledge,  that  the  supposed  new 
discovery  had  been  in  successful  operation  for  sixteen 
years,  in  a  town  but  little  more  than  sixteen  miles  dis- 
tant. Now,  in  other  things,  we  act  otherwise.  If  a 
manufacturer  discovers  a  new  combination  of  wheels,  or 
a  new  mode  of  applying  water  or  steam-power,  by  which 
stock  can  be  economized,  or  the  value  of  fabrics  enhanced 
ten  per  cent.,  the  information  flies  over  the  country  at 
once  ;  the  old  machinery  is  discarded,  the  new  is  substi- 
tuted. Nay,  it  is  difficult  for  an  inventor  to  preserve  the 


48  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS   OF 

secret  of  his  invention,  until  he  can  secure  it  by  letters- 
patent.  Our  mechanics  seem  to  possess  a  sort  of  keen, 
grey-hound  faculty,  by  which  they  can  scent  an  improve- 
ment afar  off.  They  will  sometimes  go  in  disguise  to  the 
inventor,  and  offer  themselves  as  workmen  ;  and  instances 
have  been  known  of  their  breaking  into  his  workshop, 
by  night,  and  purloining  the  invention.  And  hence  that 
progress  in  the  mechanic  arts,  which  has  given  a  name  to 
the  age  in  which  we  live,  and  made  it  a  common  wonder. 
Improvements  in  useful,  and  often  in  useless,  arts,  com- 
mand solid  prices,  —  twenty,  fifty,  or  even  a  hundred 
thousand  dollars,  —  while  improvements  in  education,  in 
the  means  of  obtaining  new  guaranties  for  the  perma- 
nence of  all  we  hold  dear,  and  for  making  our  children 
and  our  children's  children  wiser  and  happier,  these  are 
scarcely  topics  of  conversation  or  inquiry.  Do  we  not 
need,  then,  some  new  and  living  institution,  some  animate 
organization,  which  shall  at  least  embody  and  diffuse  all 
that  is  now  known  on  this  subject,  and  thereby  save, 
every  year,  hundreds  of  children  from  being  sacrificed  to 
experiments  which  have  been  a  hundred  times  exploded  ? 
Before  noticing  some  particulars,  in  which  a  common 
channel  for  receiving  and  for  disseminating  information, 
may  subserve  the  prosperity  of  our  Common  Schools, 
allow  me  to  premise  that  there  is  one  rule,  which,  in  all 
places,  and  in  all  forms  of  education,  should  be  held  as 
primary,  paramount,  and,  as  far  as  possible,  exclusive. 
Acquirement  and  pleasure  should  go  hand  in  hand.  They 
should  never  part  company.  The  pleasure  of  acquiring 
should  be  the  incitement  to  acquire.  A  child  is  wholly 
incapable  of  appreciating  the  ultimate  value  or  uses  of 
knowledge.  In  its  early  beginnings,  the  motive  of  gen- 
eral, future  utility  will  be  urged  in  vain.  Tell  an  abece- 
darian, as  an  inducement  to  learn  his  letters,  of  the 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  49 

sublimities  of  poetry  and  eloquence,  that  may  be  wrought 
out  of  the  alphabet,  and  to  him  it  is  not  so  good  as  moon- 
shine. Let  me  ask  any  man  whether  he  ever  had,  when 
a  child,  any  just  conception  of  the  uses,  to  which  he  is 
now,  as  a  man,  daily  applying  his  knowledge.  How  vain 
is  it,  then,  to  urge  upon  a  child,  as  a  motive  to  study, 
that  which  he  cannot  possibly  understand  !  Nor  is  the 
motive  of  fear  preferable.  Fear  is  one  of  the  most  de- 
basing and  dementalizing  of  all  the  passions.  The  senti- 
ment of  fear  was  given  us,  that  it  might  be  roused  into 
action,  by  whatever  should  be  shunned,  scorned,  abhorred. 
The  emotion  should  never  be  associated  with  what  is  to 
be  desired,  toiled  for,  and  loved.  If  a  child  appetizes  his 
books,  then  lesson-getting  is  free  labor.  If  he  revolts  at 
them,  then  it  is  slave-labor.  Less  is  done,  and  the  little 
is  not  so  well  done.  Nature  has  implanted  a  feeling  of 
curiosity  in  the  breast  of  every  child,  as  if  to  make  her- 
self certain  of  his  activity  and  progress.  The  desire  of 
learning  alternates  with  the  desire  of  food  ;  the  mental 
with  the  bodily  appetite.  The  former  is  even  more  crav- 
ing and  exigent  in  its  nature  than  the  latter,  and  acts 
longer  without  satiety.  Men  sit  with  folded  arms,  even 
while  they  arc  surrounded  by  objects  of  which  they  know 
nothing.  Who  ever  saw  that  done  by  a  child  ?  But  we 
cloy,  disgust,  half-extirpate,  this  appetite  for  knowledge, 
and  then  deny  its  existence.  Mark  a  child,  when  a  clear, 
well-defined,  vivid  conception  seizes  it.  The  whole  ner- 
vous tissue  vibrates.  Every  muscle  leaps.  Every  joint 
plays.  The  face  becomes  auroral.  The  spirit  flashes 
through  the  body,  like  lightning  through  a  cloud.  Tell 
a  child  the  simplest  story,  which  is  adapted  to  his  present 
state  of  mental  advancement,  and  therefore  intelligible, 
and  he  will  forget  sleep,  leave  food  untasted,  nor  would 
he  be  enticed  from  hearing  it,  though  you  should  give 


50  MEANS  AND    OBJECTS    OP 

him  for  playthings,  shining  fragments  broken  off  from  the 
sun.  Observe  the  blind,  and  the  deaf  and  dumb.  So 
strong  is  their  inborn  desire  for  knowledge,  such  are  the 
amazing  attractive  forces  of  their  minds  for  it,  that,  al- 
though those  natural  inlets,  the  eye  and  the  ear,  are 
closed,  yet  they  will  draw  it  inward,  through  the  solid 
walls  and  incasements  of  the  body.  If  the  eye  be  cur- 
tained with  darkness,  it  will  enter  through  the  ear.  If 
the  ear  be  closed  in  silence,  it  will  ascend  along  the 
nerves  of  touch.  Every  new  idea  that  enters  into  the 
presence  of  the  sovereign  mind,  carries  offerings  of  de- 
light with  it,  to  make  its  coming  welcome.  Indeed,  our 
Maker  created  us  in  blank  ignorance,  for  the  very  purpose 
of  giving  us  the  boundless,  endless  pleasure  of  learning 
new  things ;  and  the  true  path  for  the  human  intellect 
leads  onward  arid  upward  from  ignorance  towards  om- 
niscience, ascending  by  an  infinity  of  steps,  each  novel 
and  delightful. 

The  voice  of  Nature,  therefore,  forbids  the  infliction  of 
annoyance,  discomfort,  pain,  upon  a  child,  while  engaged 
in  study.  If  he  actually  suffers  from  position,  or  heat, 
or  cold,  or  fear,  not  only  is  a  portion  of  the  energy  of  his 
mind  withdrawn  from  his  lesson,  —  all  of  which  should 
be  concentrated  upon  it, — but,  at  that  undiscriminating 
age,  the  pain  blends  itself  with  the  study,  makes  part  of 
the  remembrance  of  it,  and  thus  curiosity  and  the  love 
of  learning  are  deadened,  or  turned  away  towards  vicious 
objects.  This  is  the  philosophy  of  children's  hating  study. 
We  insulate  them  by  fear  ;  we  touch  them  with  non-con- 
ductors ;  and  then,  because  they  emit  no  spark,  we  gravely 
aver  that  they  are  non-electric  bodies.  If  possible,  pleas- 
ure should  be  made  to  flow  like  a  sweet  atmosphere 
around  the  early  learner,  and  pain  be  kept  beyond  the 
association  of  ideas.  You  cannot  open  blossoms  with  a 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  51 

north-east  storm.  The  buds  of  the  hardiest  plants  will 
wait  for  the  genial  influences  of  the  sun,  though  they 
perish  while  waiting. 

The  first  practical  application  of  these  truths,  in  rela- 
tion to  our  Common  Schools,  is  to  School-house  Archi- 
tecture, —  a  subject  so  little  regarded,  yet  so  vitally  im- 
portant. The  construction  of  school-houses  involves,  not 
the  love  of  study  and  proficiency,  only,  but  health  and 
length  of  life.  I  have  the  testimony  of  many  eminent 
physicians  to  this  fact.  They  assure  me  that  it  is  within 
their  own  personal  knowledge,  that  there  is,  annually, 
loss  of  life,  destruction  of  health,  and  such  anatomical 
distortion  as  renders  life  hardly  worth  possessing,  growing 
out  of  the  bad  construction  of  our  school-houses.  Nor  is 
this  evil  confined  to  a  few  of  them,  only.  It  is  a  very 
general  calamity.  I  have  seen  many  school-houses,  in 
central  districts  of  rich  and  populous  towns,  where  each 
seat  connected  with  a  desk,  consisted  only  of  an  upright 
post  or  pedestal,  jutting  up  out  of  the  floor,  the  upper  end 
of  which  was  only  about  eight  or  ten  inches  square,  with- 
out side-arms  or  back-board  ;  and  some  of  them  so  high 
that  the  feet  of  the  children  in  vain  sought  after  the  floor. 
They  were  beyond  soundings.  Yet,  on  the  hard  top  of 
these  stumps,  the  masters  and  misses  of  the  school  must 
balance  themselves,  as  well  as  they  can,  for  six  hours  in 
a  day.  All  attempts  to  preserve  silence  in  such  a  house 
are  not  only  vain,  but  cruel.  Nothing  but  absolute  em- 
palement  could  keep  a  live  child  still,  on  such  a  seat ; 
and  you  would  hardly  think  him  worth  living,  if  it  could. 
The  pupils  will  resort  to  every  possible  bodily  evolution 
for  relief ;  and,  after  all,  though  they  may  change  the  place, 
they  keep  the  pain.  I  have  good  reasons  for  remembering 
one  of  another  class  of  school-houses,  which  the  scien- 
tific would  probably  call  the  sixth  order  of  architecture, 


52  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS   OF 

—  the  wicker-work  order,  summer-houses  for  winter  res- 
idence, —  where  there  never  was  a  severely  cold  day, 
without  the  ink's  freezing  in  the  pens  of  the  scholars 
while  they  were  writing ;  and  the  teacher  was  literally 
obliged  to  compromise  between  the  sufferings  of  those  who 
were  exposed  to  the  cold  of  the  windows  and  those  exposed 
to  the  heat  of  the  fire,  by  not  raising  the  thermometer  of 
the  latter  above  ninety  degrees,  until  that  of  the  former  fell 
below  thirty.  A  part  of  the  children  suffered  the  Arctic" 
cold  of  Captains  Ross  and  Parry,  and  a  part,  the  torrid 
heat  of  the  Landers,  without,  in  either  case,  winning  the 
honors  of  a  discoverer.  It  was  an  excellent  place  for 
the  teacher  to  illustrate  one  of  the  facts  in  geography  ; 
for  five  steps  would  have  carried  him  through  the  five 
zones.  Just  before  my  present  circuit,  I  passed  a  school- 
house,  the  roof  of  which,  on  one  side,  was  trough-like ; 
and  down  towards  the  eaves  there  was  a  large  hole ;  so 
that  the  whole  operated  like  a  tunnel  to  catch  all  the  rain 
and  pour  it  into  the  school-room.  At  first,  I  did  not 
know  but  it  might  be  some  apparatus  designed  to  explain 
the  Deluge.  I  called  and  inquired  of  the  mistress,  if  she 
and  her  little  ones  were  not  sometimes  drowned  out. 
She  said  she  should  be,  only  that  the  floor  leaked  as  badly 
as  the  roof,  and  drained  off  the  water.  And  yet  a  health- 
ful, comfortable  school-house  can  be  erected  as  cheaply  as 
one  which,  judging  from  its  construction,  you  would 
say,  had  been  dedicated  to  the  evil  genius  of  deformity 
and  suffering. 

There  is  another  evil  in  the  construction  of  our  school- 
houses,  whose  immediate  consequences  are  not  so  bad, 
though  their  remote  ones  are  indefinitely  worse.  No  fact 
is  now  better  established,  than  that  a  man  cannot  live 
without  a  supply  of  about  a  gallon  of  fresh  air,  every 
minute ;  nor  enjoy  good  health,  indeed,  without  much 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  53 

more.  The  common  air,  as  is  now  well  known,  is  mainly 
composed  of  two  ingredients,  one  only  of  which  can  sus- 
tain life,  The  action  of  the  lungs  upon  the  vital  portion 
of  the  air,  changes  its  very  nature,  converting  it  from  a 
life-sustaining  to  a  life-destroying  element.  As  we  inhale 
a  portion  of  the  atmosphere,  it  is  healthful ;  —  the  same 
portion,  as  we  exhale  it,  is  poisonous.  Hence,  ventila- 
tion in  rooms,  especially  where  large  numbers  are  col- 
lected, is  a  condition  of  health  and  life.  Privation  ad- 
mits of  no  excuse.  To  deprive  a  child  of  comfortable 
clothes,  or  wholesome  food,  or  fuel,  may  sometimes,  pos- 
sibly, be  palliated.  These  cost  money,  and  often  draw 
hardly  upon  the  scanty  resources  of  the  poor.  But  what 
shall  we  say  of  stinting  and  starving  a  child,  in  regard  to 
this  prime  necessary  of  life,  fresh  air  ?  —  of  holding  his 
mouth,  as  it  were,  lest  he  should  obtain  a  sufficiency  of 
that  vital  element,  which  God,  in  His  munificence,  has 
poured  out,  a  hundred  miles  deep,  all  around  the  globe  ? 
Of  productions,  reared  or  transported  by  human  toil, 
there  may  be  a  dearth.  At  any  rate,  frugality  in  such 
things  is  commendable.  But  to  put  a  child  on  short  al- 
lowances out  of  this  sky-full  of  air,  is  enough  to  make  a 
miser  weep.  It  is  as  absurd,  as  it  would  have  been  for 
Noah,  while  the  torrents  of  rain  were  still  descending,  to 
have  put  his  family  upon  short  allowances  of  water.  This 
vast  quantity  of  air  was  given  us  to  supersede  the  neces- 
sity of  ever  using  it  at  second-hand.  Heaven  has  or- 
dained this  matter  with  adorable  wisdom.  That  very 
portion  of  the  air  which  we  turn  into  poison,  by  respiring 
it,  becomes  the  aliment  of  vegetation.  What  is  death  to 
us,  is  life  to  all  verdure  and  flowerage.  And  again,  vege- 
tation rejects  the  ingredient  which  is  life  to  us.  Thus 
the  equilibrium  is  forever  restored  ;  or  rather,  it  is  never 
destroyed.  In  this  perpetual  circuit,  the  atmosphere  is 


54  MEANS    AND    OBJECTS    OP 

forever  renovated,  and  made  the  sustainer  of  life,  both 
for  the  animal  and  vegetable  worlds. 

A  simple  contrivance  for  ventilating  the  school-room, 
unattended  with  any  perceptible  expense,  would  rescue 
children  from  this  fatal,  though  unseen  evil.  It  is  an  in- 
disputable fact,  that,  for  years  past,  far  more  attention 
has  been  paid,  in  this  respect,  to  the  construction  of  jails 
and  prisons,  than  to  that  of  school-house?.  Yet,  why 
should  we  treat  our  felons  better  than  our  children?  I 
have  observed  in  all  our  cities  and  populous  towns,  that, 
wherever  stables  have  been  recently  built,  provision  has 
been  made  for  their  ventilation.  This  is  encouraging,  for 
I  hope  the  children's  turn  will  come,  when  gentlemen 
shall  have  taken  care  of  their  horses.  I  implore  physi- 
cians to  act  upon  this  evil.  Let  it  be  removed,  extirpated, 
cut  off,  surgically. 

I  cannot  here  stop  to  give  even  an  index  of  the  advan- 
tages of  an  agreeable  site  for  a  school-house ;  of  attrac- 
tive, external  appearance ;  of  internal  finish,  neatness, 
and  adaptation  ;  nor  of  the  still  more  important  subject 
of  having  two  rooms  for  all  large  schools,  —  both  on  the 
same  floor,  or  one  over  the  other,  —  so  as  to  allow  a  sep- 
aration of  the  large  from  the  small  scholars,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  placing  the  latter,  at  least,  under  the  care  of  a 
female  teacher.  Each  of  these  topics,  and  especially  the 
last,  is  worthy  of  a  separate  essay.  Allow  me,  however, 
to  remark,  in  passing,  that  I  regard  it  as  one  of  the 
clearest  ordinances  of  nature,  that  woman  is  the  appointed 
guide  and  guardian  of  children  of  a  tender  age.  And 
she  does  not  forego,  but,  in  the  eye  of  prophetic  vision, 
she  anticipates  and  makes  her  own,  all  the  immortal 
honors  of  the  academy,  the  forum,  and  the  senate,  when 
she  lays  their  deep  foundations,  by  training  up  children 
in  the  way  they  should  go. 


COMMON-SCHOOL  EDUCATION.  55 

A  great  mischief,  — I  use  the  word  mischief,  because  it 
implies  a  certain  degree  of  wickedness,  —  a  great  mis- 
chief is  suffered  in  the  diversity  and  multiplicity  of  our 
school  books.  Not  more  than  twenty  or  thirty  different 
kinds  of  books,  exclusive  of  a  school  library,  are  needed 
in  our  Common  Schools  ;  and  yet,  though  I  should  not 
dare  state  the  fact,  if  I  had  not  personally  sought  out  the 
information  from  most  authentic  sources,  there  are  now, 
in  actual  use  in  the  schools  of  this  State,  more  than  three 
hundred  different  kinds  of  books;  and,  in  the  markets  of 
this  and  the  neighboring  States,  seeking  for  our  adoption, 
I  know  not  how  many  hundreds  more.  The  standards, 
in  spelling,  pronunciation,  and  writing  ;  in  rules  of  gram- 
mar and  in  processes  in  arithmetic,  are  as  various  as  the 
books.  Correct  language,  in  one  place,  is  provincialism 
in  another.  While  we  agree  in  regarding  the  confusion 
of  Babel  as  a  judgment,  we  unite  in  confounding  it  more, 
as  though  it  were  a  blessing.  But  is  not  uniformity  on 
these  subjects  desirable  ?  Are  there  not  some  of  these 
books,  to  which  all  good  judges,  on  comparison,  would 
award  the  preference  ?  Could  they  not  be  afforded  much 
cheaper  for  the  great  market  which  uniformity  would 
open  ;  thus  furnishing  better  books  at  lower  prices  ?  And 
why  not  teach  children  aright,  the  first  time  ?  It  is  much 
harder  to  unlearn  than  to  learn.  Why  go  through  three 
processes  instead  of  one,  by  first  learning,  then  unlearn- 
ing, and  then  learning,  again  ?  This  mischief  grew  out 
of  the  immense  profits  formerly  realized  from  the  manu- 
facture of  school  books.  There  seems  never  to  have  been 
any  difficulty  in  procuring  reams  of  recommendations, 
because  patrons  have  acted  under  no  responsibility.  An 
edition  once  published  must  be  sold  ;  for  the  date  has  be- 
come almost  as  important  in  school  books,  as  in  almanacs. 
All  manner  of  devices  are  daily  used  to  displace  the  old 


56  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS   OF 

books,  and  to  foist  in  new  ones.  The  compiler  has  a 
cousin  in  the  town  of  A,  who  will  decry  the  old  and  re- 
commend the  new ;  or  a  literary  gentleman  in  the  city  of 
B  has  just  published  some  book  on  a  different  subject, 
and  is  willing  to  exchange  recommendations,  even  ;  or 
the  author  has  a  mechanical  friend,  in  a  neighboring  town, 
who  has  just  patented  some  new  tool,  and  who  will  rec- 
ommend the  author's  book,  if  the  author  will  recom- 
mend his  tool !  Publishers  often  employ  agents  to  hawk- 
their  books  about  the  country ;  and  I  have  known  several 
instances  where  such  a  peddler, — or  picaroon, — has  taken 
all  the  old  books  of  a  whole  class  in  school,  in  exchange 
for  his  new  ones,  book  for  book, — looking,  of  course,  to 
his  chance  of  making  sales  after  the  book  had  been  estab- 
lished in  the  school,  for  reimbursement  and  profits  ;  so 
that  at  last,  the  children  have  to  pay  for  what  they  sup- 
posed was  given  them.  On  this  subject,  too,  cannot  the 
mature  views  of  competent  and  disinterested  men,  resid- 
ing, respectively,  in  all  parts  of  the  State,  be  the  means 
of  effecting  a  much-needed  reform  ? 

There  is  another  point,  where,  as  it  seems  to  me,  a 
united  effort  among  the  friends  of  education  would,  in 
certain  branches  of  instruction,  increase  tenfold  the 
efficiency  of  our  Common  Schools.  I  mean,  the  use  of 
some  simple  apparatus,  so  as  to  employ  the  eye,  more 
than  the  ear,  in  the  acquisition  of  knowledge.  After  the 
earliest  years  of  childhood,  the  superiority  of  the  eye  over 
the  other  senses,  in  quickness,  in  precision,  in  the  vast- 
ness  of  its  field  of  operations,  and  in  its  power  of  pene- 
trating, like  a  flash,  into  any  interstices,  where  light  can 
go  and  come,  is  almost  infinite.  The  senses  of  taste,  and 
smell,  and  touch,  seem  to  be  more  the  servants  of  the 
body  than  of  the  soul ;  and,  amongst  the  infinite  variety 
of  objects  in  the  external  world,  hearing  takes  notice  of 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION,  57 

sounds  only.  Close  your  eyes,  and  then,  with  the  aid  of 
the  other  senses,  examine  a  watch,  an  artisan's  workshop, 
a  manufactory,  a  ship,  a  steam-engine  ;  and  how  meagre 
and  formless  are  all  the  ideas  they  present  to  you.  But 
the  eye  is  the  great  thoroughfare  between  the  outward  and 
material  infinite,  and  the  inward  and  spiritual  infinite. 
The  mind  often  acquires,  by  a  glance  of  the  eye,  what 
volumes  of  books  and  months  of  study  could  not  reveal 
so  livingly  through  the  ear.  Every  thing  that  comes 
through  the  eye,  too,  has  a  vividness,  a  clear  outline,  a 
just  collocation  of  parts,  —  each  in  its  proper  place, — 
which  the  other  senses  can  never  communicate.  Ideas 
or  impressions  acquired  through  vision  are  long-lived. 
Those  acquired  through  the  agency  of  the  other  senses 
often  die  young.  Hence,  the  immeasurable  superiority 
of  this  organ  is  founded  in  Nature.  There  is  a  fund  of 
truth  in  the  old  saying,  that  "  seeing  is  believing."  There 
never  will  be  any  such  maxim  in  regard  to  the  other 
senses.  To  use  the  ear  instead  of  the  eye,  in  any  case 
where  the  latter  is  available,  is  as  preposterous,  as  it 
would  be  for  our  migratory  birds,  in  their  overland  pas- 
sage, to  walk  rather  than  to  fly.  We  laugh  at  the  Ger- 
mans, because  in  using  their  oxen,  they  attach  the  load 
to  the  horns,  instead  of  the  neck  ;  but  do  we  not  commit 
a  much  greater  absurdity,  in  communicating  knowledge 
through  the  narrow  fissure  of  the  ear,  which  holds  com- 
munication only  with  a  small  circle  of  things,  and  in  that 
circle,  only  with  things  that  utter  a  sound,  instead  of  con- 
veying it  through  the  broad  portals  of  the  earth  and 
heaven  surveying  eye  ?  Nine  tenths,  —  may  I  not  say 
ninety-nine  hundredths,  —  of  all  our  Common  School  in- 
struction are  conveyed  through  the  ear ;  or,  —  which  is 
the  same  thing,  —  through  the  medium  of  written  instead 
of  spoken  words,  where  the  eye  has  been  taught  to  do 


58  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS   OF 

the  work  of  the  ear.  In  teaching  those  parts  of  geogra- 
phy which  comprise  the  outlines  and  natural  features  of 
the  earth,  and  in  astronomy,  the  use  of  the  globe  and  the 
planetarium  would  reduce  the  labor  of  months  to  as 
many  hours.  Ocular  evidence,  also,  is  often  indispensa- 
ble for  correcting  the  imperfections  of  language,  as  it  is 
understood  by  a  child.  For  instance,  (and  I  take  this 
illustration  from  fact  and  not  from  imagination,)  a  child, 
born  in  the  interior,  and  who  has  never  seen  the  ocean,  is 
taught  that  the  earth  is  surrounded  by  an  elastic  medium, 
called  the  atmosphere.  He  thereby  gets  the  idea  of  per- 
fect circumfusion  and  envelopment.  In  the  next  lesson, 
he  is  taught  that  an  island  is  a  small  body  of  land  sur- 
rounded by  water.  If  he  has  a  quick  iniad,  he  may  get  the 
idea  that  an  island  is  land,  enveloped  in  water,  as  the 
earth  is  in  air.  Mature  minds  always  modify  the  mean- 
ing of  words  and  sentences  by  numerous  rules,  of  which 
a  child  knows  nothing.  If,  when  speaking  of  the  Deity 
to  a  man  of  common  intelligence,  I  use  the  word 
*'  power,"  he  understands  omnipotence  ;  and  if  I  use  the 
same  word  when  speaking  of  an  ant,  he  understands  that 
I  mean  strength  enough  to  lift  a  grain  ;  —  but  a  child 
would  require  explanations,  limiting  the  meaning  of  the 
word  in  the  one  case,  and  extending  it  in  the  other. 

Other  things  being  equal,  the  pleasure  which  a  child 
enjoys,  in  studying  or  contemplating,  is  proportioned  to 
the  liveliness  of  his  perceptions  and  ideas.  A  child  who 
spurns  books,  will  be  attracted  and  delighted  by  visible 
objects  of  well-defined  forms  and  striking  colors.  In  the 
one  case,  he  sees  things  through  a  haze  ;  in  the  other,  by 
sunlight.  A  contemplative  child,  whose  mind  gets  as 
vivid  images  from  reading  as  from  gazing,  always  prefers 
reading.  Although  it  is  undoubtedly  true,  that  taste  and 
predilection,  in  regard  to  any  subject,  will  give  brightness 


COMMON-SCHOOL  EDUCATION.  59 

and  distinctness  to  ideas,  yet  it  is  also  true  that  bright 
and  distinct  ideas  will  greatly  modify  tastes  and  predilec- 
tions. Now  the  eye  may  be  employed  much  more  exten- 
sively than  it  ever  has  been,  in  giving  what  I  will  venture 
to  call  the  geography  of  ideas,  that  is,  a  perception,  where 
one  idea  bounds  on  another ;  where  the  province  of  one 
idea  ends,  and  that  of  the  adjacent  ideas  begins.  Could 
children  be  habituated  to  fixing  these  lines  of  demarca- 
tion, to  seeing  and  feeling  ideas  as  distinctly  as  though 
they  were  geometrical  solids,  they  would  then  experience 
an  insupportable  uneasiness,  whenever  they  were  lost  in 
fog-land,  and  among  the  Isles  of  the  Mist ;  and  this  un- 
easiness would  enforce  investigation,  survey,  and  perpet- 
ual outlook,  and,  in  after-life,  a  power  would  exist  of 
applying  luminous  and  exact  thought  to  extensive  combi- 
nations of  facts  and  principles,  and  we  should  have  the 
materials  of  philosophers,  statesmen  and  chief-justices. 
The  pleasure  which  children  enjoy  in  visiting  our  miser- 
able toy-shop  collections, — the  dreams  of  crazy  brains, 
done  into  wood  and  pewter,  —  comes  mainly  from  the 
vividness,  the  oneness,  wholeness,  completeness,  of  their 
perceptions.  The  gewgaws  do  not  give  delight,  because 
of  their  grotesqueness,  but  in  spite  of  it.  Natural  ideas 
derived  through  a  microscope,  or  from  any  mechanism 
which  would  stamp  as  deep  an  imprint,  aud  glow  with  as 
quick  a  vitality,  would  give  them  far  greater  delight. 
And  how  different,  as  to  attainments  in  useful  knowledge, 
would  children  be,  at  the  end  of  eight  or  ten  years,  ac- 
cordingly as  they  had  sought  their  gratifications  from  one 
or  the  other  of  these  sources. 

And  what  higher  delight,  what  reward,  at  once  so  in- 
nocent and  so  elevating,  as  to  explain  by  means  of  suitable 
apparatus,  to  the  larger  scholars  in  a  school,  the  cause 
and  manner  of  an  eclipse  of  the  sun  or  moon !  And 


60  MEANS   AND   OBJECTS   OP 

when  those  impressive  phenomena  occur,  how  beautiful 
to  witness  the  manifestations  of  wonder  and  of  reverence 
for  God,  which  spring  spontaneously  from  the  intelligent 
observation  of  such  sublime  spectacles,  instead  of  their 
being  regarded  with  the  horrible  imaginings  of  superstition, 
or  with  such  stupid  amazement  as  belongs  only  to  the 
brutes  that  perish  !  If  a  model  were  given,  every  inge- 
nious boy,  with  a  few  broken  window  panes  and  a  pocket- 
knife,  could  make  a  prism.  With  this,  the  rainbow,  the- 
changing  colors  of  the  dew-drop,  the  gorgeous  light  of 
the  sunset  sky,  could  be  explained  ;  and  thus  might  the 
minds  of  children  be  early  imbued  with  a  love  of  pure 
and  beautiful  things,  and  led  upward  towards  the  angel, 
instead  of  downward  towards  the  brute,  from  this  middle 
ground  of  humanity.  Imbue  the  young  mind  with  these 
sacred  influences,  and  they  will  forever  constitute  a  part 
of  its  moral  being ;  they  will  abide  with  it,  and  tend  to 
uphold  and  purify  it,  wherever  it  may  be  cast  by  fortune 
in  this  tumultuous  arena  of  life.  A  spirit  so  softened 
and  penetrated,  will  be 

"  Like  the  vase  in  which  roses  have  once  been  distilled ; 
You  may  break,  you  may  ruin  the  vase,  if  you  will, 
But  the  scent  of  the  roses  will  hang  round  it  still." 

At  the  last  session  of  the  Legislature,  a  law  was  enacted, 
authorizing  school  districts  to  raise  money  for  the  purchase 
of  apparatus  and  Common  School  libraries,  for  the  use 
of  the  children,  to  be  expended  in  sums  not  exceeding 
thirty  dollars  for  the  first  year,  and  ten  dollars  for  any 
succeeding  year.  Trifling  as  this  may  appear,  yet  I  re- 
gard the  law  as  hardly  second  in  importance  to  any  which 
has  been  passed  since  the  year  1647,  when  Common 
Schools  were  established.  Every  district  can  find  some 
secure  place  for  preserving  them,  until,  in  repairing  or 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  61 

rebuilding  schoolhouses,  a  separate  apartment  can  be 
provided  for  their  safe-keeping.  As  soon  as  one  half  the 
benefits  of  these  instruments  of  learning  shall  be  under- 
stood, I  doubt  not  that  public-spirited  individuals  will  be 
found,  in  most  towns,  who  will  contribute  something  to 
the  library  ;  and  artisans,  too,  who  will  feel  an  honorable 
pleasure  in  adding  something  to  the  apparatus,  wrought 
by  their  own  hands,  —  perhaps  devised  by  their  own  in- 
genuity. "  Build  dove-holes,"  says  the  proverb,  "  and 
the  doves  will  come."  And  what  purer  satisfaction,  what 
more  sacred  object  of  ambition,  can  any  raau  propose  to 
himself,  than  to  give  the  first  impulse  to  an  improvement, 
which  will  go  on  increasing  in  value  forever  !  It  may  be 
said,  that  mischievous  children  will  destroy  or  mutilate 
whatever  is  obtained  for  this  purpose.  But  children  will 
not  destroy  or  injure  what  gives  them  pleasure.  Indeed, 
the  love  of  malicious  mischief,  the  proneness  to  deface 
whatever  is  beautiful, — this  vile  ingredient  in  the  old 
Saxon  blood,  wherever  it  flows,  —  originated,  and  it  is 
aggravated,  by  the  almost  total  want,  amongst  us,  of 
objects  of  beauty,  taste,  and  elegance,  for  our  children  to 
grow  up  with,  to  admire,  and  to  protect. 

The  expediency  of  having  District  School  Libraries  is 
fast  becoming  a  necessity.  It  is  too  late  to  stop  the  art 
of  printing,  or  to  arrest  the  general  circulation  of  books. 
Reading  of  some  kind,  the  children  will  have  ;  and  the 
question  is,  whether  it  is  best  that  this  reading  should  be 
supplied  to  them  by  the  choice  of  men,  whose  sole  object 
is  gain,  or  whether  it  shall  be  prepared  by  wise  and 
benevolent  men,  whose  object  is  to  do  good.  Probably, 
not  one  child  in  ten  in  this  State,  has  free  access  to  any 
library  of  useful  and  entertaining  knowledge.  Where 
there  are  town,  parish,  or  social  libraries,  they  either  do 
not  consist  of  suitable  books,  or  they  are  burdened  with 


62  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS   OF 

restrictions  which  exclude  more  than  are  admitted.  A 
District  School  Library  would  be  open  to  all  the  children 
in  the  district.  They  would  enter  it  independently. 
Wherever  there  is  genius,  the  library  would  nourish  it. 
Talents  would  not  die  of  inaction,  for  want  of  some 
sphere  for  exercise.  Habits  of  reading  and  reflection 
would  be  formed,  instead  of  habits  of  idleness  and  ma- 
licious mischief.  The  wealth  and  prosperity  of  Massa- 
chusetts are  not  owing  to  natural  position  or  resources. 
They  exist,  in  despite  of  a  sterile  soil  and  an  inhospitable 
clime.  They  do  not  come  from  the  earth,  but  from  the 
ingenuity  and  frugality  of  the  people.  Their  origin  is 
good  thinking,  carried  out  into  good  action ;  and  intelli- 
gent reading  in  a  child  will  result  in  good  thinking  in  the 
man  or  woman.  But  there  is  danger,  it  is  said,  of  read- 
ing bad  books.  So  there  is  danger  of  eating  bad  food  ; 
shall  we  therefore  have  no  harvests  ?  No !  It  was  the 
kindling  excitement  of  a  few  books,  by  which  those  Mas- 
sachusetts boys,  John  Adams  and  Benjamin  Franklin, 
first  struck  out  an  intellectual  spark,  which  broadened 
into  magnitude  and  brightened  into  splendor,  until  it 
became  a  mighty  luminary,  which  now  stands,  and  shall 
forever  stand,  among  the  greater  lights  in  the  firmament 
of  glory. 

But  in  the  selection  of  books  for  school  libraries,  let 
every  man  stand  upon  his  honor,  and  never  ask  for  the 
introduction  of  any  book,  because  it  favors  the  distinctive 
views  of  his  sect  or  party.  A  wise  man  prizes  only  the 
free  and  intelligent  assent  of  unprejudiced  minds  ;  he  dis- 
dains a  slavish  and  non-compos  echo,  even  to  his  best- 
loved  opinions.  In  striving  together  for  a  common  end, 
peculiar  ends  must  neither  be  advocated  nor  assailed. 
Strengthen  the  intellect  of  children,  by  exercise  upon  the 
objects  and  laws  of  Nature  ;  train  their  feelings  to  habits 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  63 

of  order,  industry,  temperance,  justice  ;  to  the  love  of 
man,  because  of  his  wants,  and  to  the  love  of  God,  be- 
cause of  his  universally-acknowledged  perfections  ;  and, 
so  far  as  public  measures,  applicable  to  all,  can  reach,  you 
have  the  highest  human  assurance,  that,  when  they  grow 
up,  they  will  adopt  your  favorite  opinions,  if  they  are  right, 
or  discover  the  true  reasons  for  discarding  them,  if  they 
are  wrong. 

An  advantage  altogether  invaluable,  of  supplying  a 
child,  by  means  of  a  library  and  of  apparatus,  with  vivid 
ideas  and  illustrations,  is,  that  he  may  always  be  possessed, 
in  his  own  mind,  of  correct  standards  and  types  with 
which  to  compare  whatever  objects  he  may  see  in  his  ex- 
cursions abroad ;  and  that  he  may  also  have  useful  sub- 
jects of  reflection,  whenever  his  attention  is  not  engrossed 
by  external  things.  A  boy  who  is  made  clearly  to  under- 
stand the  philosophical  principle  on  which  he  flies  his  kite, 
and  then  to  recognize  the  same  principle  in  a  wind  or  a 
water-wheel,  and  in  the  sailing  of  a  ship ;  — wherever  busi- 
ness or  pleasure  may  afterwards  lead  him,  if  he  sees  that 
principle  in  operation,  he  will  mentally  refer  to  it,  and 
think  out  its  applications,  when,  otherwise,  he  would 
be  singing  or  whistling.  Twenty  years  would  work  out 
immense  results  from  such  daily  observation  and  reflec- 
tion. Dr.  Franklin  attributed  much  of  his  practical  turn 
of  mind,  —  which  was  the  salient  point  of  his  immortal- 
ity, —  to  the  fact,  that  his  father,  in  his  conversations 
before  the  family,  always  discussed  some  useful  subject, 
or  developed  some  just  principle  of  individual  or  social 
action,  instead  of  talking  forever  about  troiit-catching  or 
grouse-shooting ;  about  dogs,  dinners,  dice,  or  trumps. 
In  its  moral  bearings  this  subject  grows  into  immense  im- 
portance. How  many  months,  —  may  I  not  say  years, — 
in  a  child's  life,  when,  with  spontaneous  activity,  his  mind 


64  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS   OP 

hovers  and  floats  wherever  it  listeth  !  As  he  sits  at  home, 
amid  familiar  objects,  or  walks  frequented  paths,  or  lies 
listlessly  in  his  bed,  if  his  mind  be  not  pre-occupied  with 
some  substantial  subjects  of  thought,  the  best  that  you 
can  hope  is,  that  it  will  wander  through  dream-land,  and 
expend  its  activity  in  chasing  shadows.  Far  more  prob- 
able is  it,  especially  if  the  child  is  exposed  to  the  contam- 
ination of  profane  or  obscene  minds,  that  in  these  seasons 
of  solitude  and  reverie,  the  cockatrice's  eggs  of  impur.fi 
thoughts  and  desires  will  be  hatched.  And  what  boy,  at 
least,  is  there  who  is  not  in  daily  peril  of  being  corrupted 
by  the  evil  communications  of  his  elders  ?  We  all  know, 
that  there  are  self-styled  gentlemen  amongst  us,  —  self- 
styled  gentlemen,  —  who  daily,  and  hourly,  lap  their 
tongues  in  the  foulness  of  profanity ;  and  though,  through 
a  morally-insane  perversion,  they  may  restrain  themselves, 
in  the  presence  of  ladies  and  of  clergymen,  yet  it  is  only 
for  the  passing  hour,  when  they  hesitate  not  to  pour  out  the 
pent-up  flood,  to  deluge  and  defile  the  spotless  purity  of 
childhood,  —  and  this,  too,  at  an  age  when  these  pollut- 
ing stains  sink,  centre-deep,  into  their  young  and  tender 
hearts,  so  that  no  moral  bleachery  can  ever  afterwards 
wholly  cleanse  and  purify  them.  No  parent,  no  teacher, 
can  ever  feel  any  rational  security  about  the  growth  of 
the  moral  nature  of  his  child,  unless  he  contrives  in  some 
way  to  learn  the  tenor  of  his  secret,  silent  meditations, 
or  prepares  the  means,  beforehand,  of  determining  what 
those  meditations  shall  be.  A  child  may  soon  find  it  no 
difficult  tiling,  to  converse  and  act  by  a  set  of  approved 
rules,  and  then  to  retire  into  the  secret  chambers  of  his 
own  soul,  and  there  to  riot  and  gloat  upon  guilty  pleas- 
ures, whose  act  would  be  perdition,  and  would  turn  the 
fondest  home  iijto  a  hell.  But  there  is  an  antidote,  —  I 
do  not  say  for  all,  but  for  most,  of  this  peril.  The  mind 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  65 

of  children  can  be  supplied  with  vivid  illustrations  of  the 
works  of  Nature  and  of  Art ;  its  chambers  can  be  hung 
round  with  picture-thoughts  and  images  of  truth,  and 
charity,  and  justice,  and  affection,  which  will  be  compan- 
ions to  the  soul,  when  no  earthly  friend  can  accompany 
it. 

It  is  only  a  further  development  of  this  topic,  to  con- 
sider the  inaptitude  of  many  of  our  educational  processes, 
for  making  accurately-thinking  minds.  It  has  been  said 
by  some  one,  that  the  good  sense  and  sound  judgment, 
which  we  find  in  the  community,  are  only  what  have  es- 
caped the  general  ravage  of  a  bad  education.  School 
studies  ought  to  be  so  arranged,  as  to  promote  a  harmo- 
nious development  of  the  faculties.  In  despotic  Prussia, 
a  special  science  is  cultivated,  under  the  name  of  methodik, 
the  scope  of  which  is  to  arrange  and  adapt  studies,  so  as 
to  meet  the  wants  and  exercise  the  powers  of  the  opening 
mind.  Li  free  America,  we  have  not  the  name ;  indeed, 
we  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have  the  idea.  Surely,  the 
farmer,  the  gardener,  the  florist,  who  have  established 
rules  for  cultivating  every  species  of  grain,  and  fruit,  and 
flower,  cannot  doubt,  that,  in  the  unfolding  and  expand- 
ing of  the  young  mind,  some  processes  will  be  congenial, 
others  fatal.  Those  whose  business  it  is  to  compound  in- 
gredients, in  any  art,  weigh  them  with  the  nicest  exact- 
ness, and  watch  the  precise  moments  of  their  chemical 
combinations.  The  mechanic  selects  all  his  materials 
with  the  nicest  care,  and  measures  all  their  dimensions  to 
a  hair's  breadth  ;  and  he  knows  that  if  he  fails  in  aught,  he 
will  produce  a  weak,  loose,  irregular  fabric.  Indeed,  can 
you  name  any  business,  avocation,  profession,  or  employ- 
ment, whatever. —  even  to  the  making  of  hob-nails  or 
wooden  skewers,  —  where  chance,  ignorance,  or  accident, 
is  ever  rewarded  with  a  perfect  product  ?  But  in  no  call- 


66  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS    OP 

ing  is  there  such  a  diversity  as  in  education,  — diversity 
in  principles,  diversity  in  the  application  of  those  prin- 
ciples. Discussion,  elucidation,  the  light  of  a  thousand 
minds  brought  to  a  focus,  would  result  in  discarding  the 
worst  and  in  improving  even  the  best.  Under  this  head 
are  included  the  great  questions  respecting  the  order  and 
succession  of  studies ;  the  periods  of  alternation  between 
them ;  the  proportion  between  the  exact  and  the  approx- 
imate sciences  ;  and  what  is  principle  and  what  is  subsid- 
iary, in  pursuing  them. 

There  is  a  natural  order  and  progression  in  the  devel- 
opment of  the  faculties :  "  First  the  blade,  then  the  ear, 
afterwards  the  full  corn  in  the  ear."  And  in  the  mind, 
as  in  the  grain,  the  blade  may  be  so  treated  that  the  full 
corn  will  never  appear.  For  instance,  if  any  faculty  is 
brooded  upon  and  warmed  into  life  before  the  period  of 
its  natural  development,  it  will  have  a  precocious  growth, 
to  be  followed  by  weakness,  or  by  a  want  of  symmetry  and 
proportion  in  the  whole  character.  Consequences  still 
worse  will  follow,  where  faculties  are  cultivated  in  the 
reverse  order  of  their  natural  development.  Again,  if 
collective  ideas  are  forced  into  a  child's  mind,  without  his 
being  made  to  analyze  them,  and  understand  the  individ- 
ual ideas  of  which  they  are  composed,  the  probability  is, 
that  the  collective  idea  will  never  be  comprehended.  Let 
me  illustrate  this  position  by  a  case  where  it  is  least  likely 
to  happen,  that  we  may  form  some  idea  of  its  frequency 
in  other  things.  A  child  is  taught  to  count  ten.  He  is 
taught  to  repeat  the  words,  one,  two,  &c.,  as  words, 
merely ;  and  if  care  be  not  taken,  he  will  attach  no  more 
comprehensive  idea  to  the  word  ten,  than  he  did  to  the 
word  one.  He  will  not  think  of  ten  ones,  as  he  uses  it. 
In  the  same  way,  he  proceeds  to  use  the  words,  hundred, 
thousand,  million,  &c.,  — the  idea  in  his  mind,  not  keep- 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  67 

ing  within  hailing  distance  of  the  signification  of  the 
words  used.  Hence  there  is  generated  a  habit  of  using 
words,  not  as  the  representatives  of  ideas,  but  as  sounds, 
merely.  How  few  children  there  are  of  the  age  of  six- 
teen years,  —  an  age  at  which  almost  all  of  them  have 
ceased  to  attend  upon  our  schools,  —  who  have  any  ade- 
quate conception  of  the  power  of  the  signs  they  have  been 
using.  How  few  of  them  know  even  so  simple  a  truth  as 
this,  that,  if  they  were  to  count  one,  every  second,  for  ten 
hours  in  a  day,  without  intermission,  it  would  take  about 
twenty-eight  days  to  count  a  million.  Yet  they  have  been 
talking  of  millions,  and  hundreds  of  millions,  as  though 
they  were  units.  Now,  suppose  you  speak  to  such  a  per- 
son of  millions  of  children,  growing  up  under  a  highly 
elaborated  system  of  vicious  education,  unbalanced  by 
any  good  influences ;  or  suppose  you  appeal  to  him,  in 
behalf  of  a  million  of  people  wailing  beneath  the  smitings 
of  the  oppressor's  rod,  —  he  gets  no  distinct  -idea  of  so 
many  as  fifty ;  and  therefore  he  has  no  intellectual  sub- 
stratum, upon  which  to  found  an  appropriate  feeling,  or 
by  which  to  graduate  its  intensity. 

Again  ;  in  geography,  we  put  a  quarto-sized  map,  or 
perhaps  a  globe  no  larger  than  a  goose's  egg,  into  a  child's 
hands,  and  we  invite  him  to  spread  out  his  mind  over 
continents,  oceans,  and  archipelagoes,  at  once.  This  pro- 
cess does  not  expand  the  mind  of  the  child  to  the  dimen- 
sions of  the  objects,  but  it  belittles  the  objects  to  the  nut- 
shell capacity  of  the  mind.  Such  a  course  of  instruction 
may  make  precocious,  green-house  children  ;  but  you  will 
invariably  find,  that,  when  boys  are  prematurely  turned 
into  little  men,  they  remain  little  men,  always.  Physical 
geogfapby  should  be  commenced  by  making  a  child  de- 
scribe and  plot  a  room  with  its  fixtures,  a  house  with  its 
apartments,  the  adjoining  yards,  fields,  roads  or  streets, 


68  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS    OF 

hills,  waters,  <fec.  Then  embracing,  if  possible,  the  oc- 
casion of  a  visit  to  a  neighboring  town,  or  county,  that 
should  be  included.  Here,  perpetual  reference  must  be 
had  to  the  points  of  the  compass.  After  a  just  extension 
has  been  given  to  his  ideas  of  a  county,  or  a  state,  then 
that  county  or  state  should  be  shown  to  him  on  a  globe ; 
and,  cost  what  labor  or  time  it  may,  his  mind  must  be  ex- 
panded to  a  comprehension  of  relative  magnitudes,  so  that 
his  idea  of  the  earth  shall  be  as  adequate  to  the  size  of 
the  earth,  as  his  idea  of  the  house  or  the  field  was  to  the 
size  of  the  house  or  the  field.  Thus  the  pupil  founds  his 
knowledge  of  unseen  things  upon  the  distinct  notions  of 
eyesight,  in  regard  to  familiar  objects.  Yet  I  believe  it 
is  not  very  uncommon  to  give  the  mind  of  the  young 
learner  a  continent,  for  a  single  intellectual  meal,  and  an 
ocean  to  wash  it  down  with.  It  recently  happened,  in  a 
school  within  my  own  knowledge,  that  a  class  of  small 
scholars  in  geography,  on  being  examined  respecting  the 
natural  divisions  of  the  earth,  —  its  continents,  oceans, 
islands,  gulfs,  &c.,  —  answered  all  the  questions  with  ad- 
mirable precision  and  promptness.  They  were  then  asked, 
by  a  visitor,  some  general  questions  respecting  their  lesson, 
and,  amongst  others,  whether  they  had  ever  seen  the 
earth  about  which  they  had  been  reciting ;  and  they 
ijnanimously  declared,  in  good  faith,  that  they  never  had. 
Do  we  not  find  here  an  explanation,  why  there  are  so 
many  men  whose  conceptions  on  all  subjects  are  laid 
down  on  so  small  a  scale  of  miles,  —  so  many  thousand 
leagues  to  a  hair's  breadth  ?  By  such  absurd  processes, 
no  vivid  ideas  can  be  gained,  and  therefore  no  pleasure  is 
enjoyed.  A  capacity  of  wonder  is  destroyed  in  a  day, 
sufficient  to  keep  alive  the  flame  of  curiosity  for  years. 
The  subjects  of  the  lessons  cease  to  be  new,  and  yet  are 
not  understood.  Curiosity,  which  is  the  hunger  and 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  69 

thirst  of  the  mind,  is  forever  cheated  and  balked ;  for 
nothing  but  a  real  idea  can  give  real,  true,  intellectual 
gratification.  A  habit,  too,  is  inevitably  formed  of  re- 
citing, without  thinking.  At  length,  the  most  glib  reci- 
tation becomes  the  best;  and  the  less  the  scholars  are 
delayed  by  thought,  the  faster  they  can  prate,  as  a  mill 
clacks  quicker  when  there  is  no  grist  in  the  hopper. 
Thoroughness,  therefore,  —  thoroughness,  and  again  I 
say,  thoroughness,  for  the  sake  of  the  knowledge,  and 
still  more  for  the  sake  of  the  habit,  —  should,  at  all 
events,  be  enforced ;  and  a  pupil  should  never  be  suffered 
to  leave  any  subject,  until  he  can  reach  his  arms  quite 
around  it,  and  clinch  his  hands  upon  the  opposite  side. 
Those  persons,  who  know  a  little  of  every  thing  but 
nothing  well,  have  been  aptly  compared  to  a  certain  sort 
of  pocket-knife,  which  some  over-curious  people  carry 
about  with  them,  which,  in  addition  to  a  common  knife, 
contains  a  file,  a  chisel,  a  saw,  a  gimlet,  a  screw-driver, 
and  a  pair  of  scissors,  but  all  so  diminutive,  that  the 
moment  they  are  needed  for  use,  they  are  found  useless. 
It  seems  to  me  that  one  of  the  greatest  errors  in  edu- 
cation, at  the  present  time,  is  the  desire  and  ambition,  at 
single  lessons,  to  teach  complex  truths,  whole  systems, 
doctrines,  theorems,  which  years  of  analysis  are  scarcely 
sufficient  to  unfold  ;  instead  of  commencing  with  simple 
elements,  and  then  rising,  by  gradations,  to  combined  re- 
sults. All  is  administered  in  a  mass.  We  strive  to 
introduce  knowledge  into  the  child's  mind,  the  great  end 
first.  When  lessons  are  given  in  this  way,  the  pupil,  being- 
unable  to  comprehend  the  ideas,  tries  to  remember  the 
words,  and  thus,  at  best,  is  sent  away  with  a  single  fact, 
instead  of  a  principle,  explanatory  of  whole  classes  of 
facts.  The  lessons  are  learned  by  rote  ;  and  when  a 
teacher  practises  upon  the  rote  system,  he  uses  the  minds 


70  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS    OF 

of  the  pupils,  just  as  they  use  their  own  slates,  in  working 
arithmetical  questions ;  —  whenever  a  second  question  is 
to  be  wrought,  the  first  is  sponged  out,  to  make  room  for 
it.  What  would  be  thought  of  a  teacher  of  music,  who 
should  give  his  pupils  the  most  complicated  exercises,  be- 
fore they  had  learned  to  sound  simple  notes  ?  It  is  said 
of  the  athlete,  Milo  of  Crotona,  that  he  began  by  lifting 
a  calf,  and  continuing  to  lift  it  daily,  he  gained  strength 
as  fast  as  the  animal  gained  weight ;  so  that  he  was  able 
to  lift  it  when  it  became  an  ox.  Had  he  begun  by  strain- 
ing to  lift  an  ox,  he  would  probably  have  broken  down, 
and  been  afterwards  unable  to  lift  even  a  calf.  The  point 
to  which  I  would  invite  the  regards  of  the  whole  commu- 
nity, is,  whether  greater  attention  should  not  be  paid  to 
gradation,  to  progression  in  a  natural  order,  to  adjustment, 
to  the  preparation  of  a  child's  mind  for  receiving  the  high- 
er forms  of  truth,  by  first  making  it  thoroughly  acquainted 
with  their  elements.  The  temptation  to  this  error  is, 
perhaps,  the  most  seductive,  that  ever  beguiles  a  teacher 
from  his  duty.  He  desires  to  make  his  pupils  appear  well. 
He  forgets  that  the  great  objects  of  their  education  lie  in 
the  power,  and  dignity,  and  virtue  of  life,  and  not  in  their 
recitations  at  the  end  of  the  quarter.  Hence,  he  strives 
to  prepare  them  for  the  hastening  day  of  exhibition. 
They  must  be  able  to  state,  in  words,  the  great  results,  in 
science,  which  human  reason  has  achieved,  after  almost 
sixty  centuries  of  labor.  For  this  purpose,  —  in  which 
they  also  are  tempted  to  conspire,  —  he  loads  their  mem- 
ories with  burden  after  burden  of  definitions  and  formu- 
las ;  which  is  about  as  useful  a  process,  —  and  is  it  not 
also  about  as  honest  ?  —  as  it  would  be  for  the  rearer  of 
nursery  trees  to  buy  golden  pippins  in  the  market,  and, 
tying  them  upon  the  branches  of  his  young  trees,  to  palm 
them  off  upon  purchasers,  as  though  the  delicious  fruit 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  71 

had  been  elaborated  from  the  succulence  of  the  stock  he 
sells. 

Another  question  of  method,  to  which  I  most  earnestly 
solicit  the  attention  of  teachers  and  of  the  whole  public, 
is,  whether  there  is  not  too  much  teaching  of  words,  in- 
stead of  things.  Never  was  a  severer  satire  uttered 
against  human  reason,  than  that  of  Mirabeau,  when  he- 
said, '"words  are  things."  That  single  phrase  explains 
the  whole  French  Revolution.  Such  a  revolution  never 
could  have  occurred  amongst  a  people  who  spoke  things, 
instead  of  words.  Just  so  far  as  words  are  things,  just  so 
far  the  infinite  contexture  of  realities  pertaining  to  body 
and  soul,  to  earth  and  heaven,  to  time  and  eternity,  is 
nothing.  The  ashes,  and  shreds,  and  wrecks  of  every 
thing  else  are  of  some  value  ;  but  of  words  not  freighted 
with  ideas,  there  is  no  salvage.  It  is  not  words,  but  words 
fitly  spoken,  that  are  like  apples  of  gold  in  pictures  of  sil- 
ver. Words  are  but  purses ;  things,  the  shining  coin 
within  them.  Why  buy  seventy  or  eighty  thousand 
purses,  —  for  it  is  said  we  have  about  that  number  of 
imtcchnical  words  in  the  language,  —  without  a  copper  for 
deposit?  I  believe  it  is  almost  universally  true,  that 
young  students  desire  to  be  composers ;  and  as  universally 
true,  that  they  dread  composition.  When  they  would 
compose,  of  what  service,  then,  are  those  columns  of 
spelling-book  words,  which  they  have  committed  to  mem- 
ory by  the  furlong  ?  Where  then,  too,  are  the  rich  mines 
of  thought  contained  in  their  Readers,  their  First-Class 
Books,  and  their  little  libraries  ?  These  they  have  been 
accustomed  to  consider  merely  as  instruments,  to  practise 
pronunciation,  empliasis,  and  cadence,  upon.  They  have 
moved,  for  years,  in  the  midst  of  ideas,  like  blind  men  in 
picture-galleries.  Hence  they  have  no  knowledge  of 
things,  and  their  relations;  and,  when  called  upon  for 


72  MEANS   AND   OBJECTS    OF 

composition,  they  have  nothing  to  compound.  But,  as 
the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  composition  is  a  sheet-full 
of  words,  a  sheet  is  filled,  though  more  from  the  diction- 
ary than  from  the  head.  This  practice  comes  at  last,  to 
make  them  a  kind  of  sportsmen  or  warriors,  who  think 
their  whole  business  is  to  fire,  not  to  hit.  Some,  who 
have  a  strong  verbal  memory,  become  dexterous  in  the 
use  of  language ;  so  that,  if  they  can  have  two  ideas,  on 
any  subject,  to  set  up  at  the  ends,  as  termini,  they  will  fill 
up  with  words  any  distance  of  space  between  them. 
Those  who  have  not  this  verbal  memory,  become  the 
wind-driven  bubbles  of  those  who  have.  When  the  habit 
is  confirmed,  of  relying  on  the  verbal  faculty,  the  rest 
of  the  mind  dies  out.  The  dogma  taught  by  Aristotle, 
that  Nature  abhors  a  vacuum,  is  experimentally  refuted. 
I  know  of  but  one  compensation  for  these  word-men ;  I 
believe  they  never  become  insane.  Insanity  requires 
some  mind  for  a  basis. 

The  subject  of  penal  discipline,  I  hardly  dare  to  men- 
tion ;  especially  discipline  by  corporal  punishment.  In 
this  department,  extremes  both  of  doctrine  and  of  practice 
prevail.  The  public  have  taken  sides,  and  parties  arc 
arrayed  against  each  other.  Some  repudiate  and  condemn 
it  altogther.  With  others,  it  is  the  great  motive-power ; 
and  they  consider  it  as,  at  least,  the  first  and  second,  if 
not  the  throp  estates  in  the  realm  of  school-keeping. 
Generally  speaking,  I  fear  that  but  little  judgment  and 
forethought  are  brought  to  the  decision  of  its  momentous 
questions.  It  cannot  be  discussed,  alone.  It  is  closely 
connected  with  intellectual  progress  ;  its  influences  per- 
vade the  whole  moral  nature ;  and  it  must  be  looked  at, 
in  its  relations  to  them.  The  justifiable  occasions,  if  any, 
for  inflicting  it ;  the  mode,  and  emphatically,  the  spirit, 
of  its  administration  ;  its  instruments  ;  its  extent ;  the 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  73 

conduct  that  should  precede  and  should  follow  it,  —  are 
questions  worthy  of  the  deepest  attention.  That  corporal 
punishment,  considered  by  itself,  and  without  reference 
to  its  ultimate  object,  is  an  evil,  probably  none  will  deny. 
Yet,  with  almost  three  thousand  public  schools  in  this 
State,  composed  of  all  kinds  of  children,  with  more  than 
five  thousand  teachers,  of  all  grades  of  qualification,  to 
govern  them,  probably  the  evils  of  corporal  punishment 
must  be  endured,  or  the  greater  ones  of  insubordination 
and  mutiny  be  incurred.  I  hesitate,  also,  to  speak  so 
fully  of  the  magnitude  of  these  evils,  as  I  would  wish  to 
do ;  because  there  are  some  excellent  teachers,  who  man- 
age schools  without  resorting  to  it ;  while  others,  ambi- 
tious for  the  same  honor,  but  destitute  of  skill  and  of  the 
divine  qualities  of  love,  patience,  sympathy,  by  which 
alone  it  can  be  won,  have  discarded  what  they  call  cor- 
poral punishment,  but  have  resorted  to  other  modes  of 
discipline,  which,  though  they  may  bear  a  milder  name, 
are,  in  reality,  more  severe.  To  imprison  timid  children  in 
a  dark  and  solitary  place ;  to  brace  open  the  jaws  with  a 
piece  of  wood  ;  to  torture  the  muscles  and  bones  by  the 
strain  of  an  unnatural  position,  or  of  holding  an  enor- 
mous weight ;  to  inflict  a  wound  upon  the  instinctive 
feelings  of  modesty  and  delicacy,  by  making  a  girl  sit 
with  the  boys,  or  go  out  with  them,  at  recess ;  to  bring  a 
whole  class  around  a  fellow-pupil,  to  ridicule  and  shame 
him  ;  to  break  down  the  spirit  of  self-respect,  by  enforcing 
some  ignominious  compliance  ;  to  give  a  nick-name  ;  — 
these,  and  such  as  these,  are  the  gentle  appliances,  by 
which  some  teachers,  who  profess  to  discard  corporal  pun- 
ishment, maintain  the  empire  of  the  schoolroom;  —  as 
though  the  muscles  and  bones  were  less  corporeal  than 
the  skin ;  as  though  a  wound  of  the  spirit  were  of  less 
moment  than  one  of  the  flesh  ;  and  the  bodv's  blood  more 


74  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS    OF 

sacred  than  the  soul's  purity.  But  of  these  solemn  topics, 
it  is  impossible  here  to  speak.  I  cannot,  however,  for- 
bear to  express  the  opinion,  that  punishment  should  never 
be  inflicted,  except  in  cases  of  the  extremest  necessity  ; 
while  the  experiment  of  sympathy,  confidence,  persuasion, 
encouragement,  should  be  repeated,  for  ever  and  ever. 
The  fear  of  bodily  pain  is  a  degrading  motive  ;  but  we 
have  authority  for  saying,  that  where  there  is  perfect  love, 
every  known  law  will  be  fulfilled.  Parents  and  teachers, 
often  create  that  disgust  at  study,  and  that  incorrigible- 
ness  and  obstinacy  of  disposition,  which  they  deplore.  It 
is  a  sad  exchange,  if  the  very  blows,  which  beat  arith- 
metic and  grammar  into  a  boy,  should  beat  confidence 
and  manliness  out.  So  it  is  quite  as  important  to  consider 
what  feelings  are  excited,  in  the  mind,  as  what  are  sub- 
dued, by  the  punishment.  Which  side  gains,  though  the 
evil  spirit  of  roguery  or  wantonness  be  driven  out,  if  seven 
other  evil  spirits,  worse  than  the  first,  —  sullenness,  irrev- 
erence, fraud,  lying,  hatred,  malice, revenge, — are  allowed 
to  come  in  ?  The  motive  from  which  the  offence  emanated, 
and  the  motives  with  which  the  culprit  leaves  the  bar  of 
his  judge  and  executioner,  are  every  thing.  If  these  are 
not  regarded,  the  offender  may  go  away  worse  than  he 
came,  in  addition  to  a  gratuitous  flagellation.  To  say  a 
child  knows  better,  is  nothing ;  if  he  knows  better,  why 
does  he  not  do  better  ?  The  answer  to  this  question  re- 
veals the  difficulty ;  and  whoever  has  not  patience  and 
sagacity  to  solve  that  inquiry,  is  as  unworthy  of  the  pa- 
rental trust,  as  is  the  physician,  of  administering  to  the 
sick,  who  prescribes  a  fatal  nostrum,  and  says,  in  justifi- 
cation, that  he  knew  nothing  of  the  disease.  In  fine,  if 
any  thing,  in  the  wide  range  of  education,  demands  pa- 
tience, forethought,  judgment,  and  the  all-subduing  spirit 
of  love,  it  is  this ;  and  though  it  may  be  too  much  to  say, 


COMMON-SCHOOL    EDUCATION.  75 

that  corporal  punishment  can  be  disused  by  all  teachers, 
with  regard  to  all  scholars,  in  all  schools,  yet  it  may  be 
averred,  without  exception,  that  it  is  never  inflicted  with 
the  right  spirit,  nor  in  the  right  measure,  when  it  is  not 
more  painful  to  him  who  imposes,  than  to  him  who  re- 
ceives it. 

Of  emulation  in  school,  as  an  incitement  to  effort,  I 
can  here  say  but  a  word ;  but  I  entreat  all  intelligent 
men  to  give  to  this  subject  a  most  careful  consideration. 
And  let  those  who  use  it,  as  a  quickener  of  the  intellect, 
beware,  lest  it  prove  a  depraver  of  the  social  affections. 
There  is  no  necessary  incompatibility  between  the  upward 
progress  of  one  portion  of  our  nature,  and  the  lower  and 
lower  debasement  of  another.  The  intellect  may  grow 
wise,  while  the  passions  grow  wicked.  No  cruelty  towards 
a  child  can  be  so  great  as  that  which  barters  morals  for 
attainment.  If,  under  the  fiery  stimulus  of  emulation, 
the  pupil  comes  to  regard  a  successful  rival  with  envy  or 
malevolence,  or  an  unsuccessful  one  with  arrogance  or 
disdain  ;  if,  in  aiming  at  the  goal  of  precedence,  he  loses 
sight  of  the  goal  of  perfection  ;  if,  to  gain  his  prize,  he 
becomes  the  hypocrite,  instead  of  the  reverer  of  virtue ; 
then,  though  his  intellect  should  enter  upon  the  stage  of 
life  with  all  the  honors  of  an  early  triumph,  yet  the  no- 
blest parts  of  his  nature,  — his  moral  and  social  affec- 
tions, —  will  be  the  victims,  led  captive  in  the  retinue. 
Suppose,  in  some  Theological  Seminary,  a  prize  were 
offered  for  the  best  exposition  of  the  commandment, 
"  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself,'  and  two  known 
competitors  were  to  task  their  intellects  to  win  it ;  and, 
on  the  day  of  trial,  one  of  these  neighbor-loving  rivals, 
with  dilated  nostril  and  expanded  frame,  should  clutch 
the  honor  ;  while  the  other  neighbor-loving  rival,  with 
quivering  lip  and  livid  countenance,  stood  by,  —  the  vul- 


76  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS   OF 

ture  of  envy,  all  the  while,  forking  her  talons  into  his 
heart ;  —  would  it  not  be  that  very  mixture  of  the  ludi- 
crous and  the  horrible,  which  demons  would  choose  for 
the  subject  of  an  epigram  !  Paint,  or  chisel  the  whole 
group  of  neighbor-loving  rivals,  and  pious  doctors  sitting 
around  and  mingling,  —  in  one  chalice,  the  hellebore  of 
pride,  and  in  another,  the  wormwood  of  defeat,  —  to  be 
administered  to  those  who  should  be  brothers,  and  can 
aught  be  found  more  worthy  to  fill  a  niche  in  the  council- 
hall  of  Pandemonium  !  Who  has  not  seen  winter,  with 
its  deepest  congelations,  come  in  between  ingenuous- 
minded  and  loving  fellow-students,  whose  hearts  would 
otherwise  have  run  together,  like  kindred  drops  of  water  ? 
Who  has  not  witnessed  a  consumption,  —  not  of  the  lungs, 
but  of  the  heart ;  nay,  both  of  lungs  and  heart,  —  wast- 
ing its  victims  with  the  smothered  frenzy  of  emulation  ? 
It  surely  is  within  the  equity  of  the  prayer,  "  lead  us  not 
into  temptation,"  not  to  lead  others  into  it.  And  ought 
not  the  teacher,  who,  as  a  general  and  prevalent,  —  I  do 
not  say  a  universal  rule,  —  cannot  sustain  order  and  in- 
sure proficiency,  in  a  school,  without  resorting  to  fear  and 
emulation,  to  consider,  whether  the  fault  be  in  human 
nature  or  in  himself  ?  And  will  there  ever  be  any  more 
of  that  secret,  silent  beneficence  amongst  us,  where  the 
left  hand  knows  not  of  the  blessings  scattered  by  the 
right  ?  —  will  there  ever  be  any  less  of  this  deadly  strife 
for  the  ostensible  signs  of  precedence,  in  the  social  and 
political  arena,  while  the  germs  of  emulation  are  so 
assiduously  cultivated  in  the  schoolroom,  the  academy, 
and  the  college  ?  The  pale  ambition  of  men,  ready  to 
sacrifice  country  and  kind  for  self,  is  only  the  fire  of 
youthful  emulation,  heated  to  a  white  heat.  Yet,  there 
is  an  inborn  sentiment  of  emulation,  in  all  minds,  and 
there  are  external  related  objects  of  that  sentiment.  The 


COMMON-SCHOOL  EDUCATION.  77 

excellent,  who  may  be  present  with  us,  but  who  are  ad- 
vanced in  life  ;  the  great  and  good,  who  are  absent,  but 
whose  fame  is  everywhere  ;  the  illustrious  dead  ;  —  these 
are  the  objects  of  emulation.  A  rivalry  with  these  yields 
sacred  love,  not  consuming  envy.  On  these,  therefore, 
let  the  emulous  and  aspiring  gaze,  until  their  eyes  over- 
flow with  tears,  and  every  tear  will  be  the  baptism  of 
honor  and  of  purity. 

Such  are  some  of  the  most  obvious  topics,  belonging  to 
that  sacred  work,  —  the  education  of  children.  The 
science,  or  philosophical  principles  on  which  this  work  is 
to  be  conducted  ;  the  art,  or  manner  in  which  those  prin- 
ciples are  to  be  applied,  must  all  be  rightly  settled  and 
generally  understood,  before  any  system  of  Public  Instruc- 
tion can  operate  with  efficiency.  Yet  all  this  has  been 
mainly  left  to  chance.  Compared  with  its  deserts,  how 
disproportionate,  how  little,  the  labor,  cost  and  talent, 
devoted  to  it.  We  have  a  Congress,  convening  annually, 
at  almost  incredible  expense,  to  decide  upon  questions  of 
tariff,  internal  improvement,  and  currency.  We  have  a 
State  Legislature,  continuing  in  session  more  than  a  fourth 
part  of  every  year,  to  regulate  our  internal  polity.  We 
have  Courts,  making  continual  circuits  through  the  Com- 
monwealth, to  adjudicate  upon  doubtful  rights  of  person 
or  property,  however  trivial.  Every  great  department  of 
literature  and  of  business  has  its  Periodical.  Every  party, 
political,  religious  and  social,  has  its  Press.  Yet  Educa- 
tion, that  vast  cause,  of  which  all  other  causes  are  only 
constituent  parts ;  that  cause,  on  which  all  other  causes 
are  dependent,  for  their  vitality  and  usefulness,  —  if  I 
except  the  American  Institute  of  Instruction,  and  a  few 
local,  feeble,  unpatronized,  though  worthy  associations, — 
Education  has  literally  nothing,  in  the  way  of  comprehen- 
sive organization  and  of  united  effort,  acting  for  a  com- 


78  MEANS   AND    OBJECTS   OF 

mon  end,  and  under  the  focal  light  ot  a  common  intelli- 
gence. It  is  under  these  circumstances,  it  is  in  view  of 
these  great  public  wants,  that  the  Board  of  Education 
has  been  established,  —  not  to  legislate,  not  to  enforce,  — 
but  to  collect  facts,  to  educe  principles,  to  diffuse  a  knowl- 
edge of  improvements  ;  —  in  fine,  to  submit  the  views  of 
men  who  have  thought  much  upon  this  subject  to  men 
who  have  thought  but  little. 

To  specify  the  labors  which  education  has  yet  to  per-, 
form,  would  be  only  to  pass  in  review  the  varied  interests 
of  humanity.  Its  general  purposes  are  to  preserve  the 
good  and  to  repudiate  the  evil  which  now  exist,  and  to 
give  scope  to  the  sublime  law  of  progression.  It  is  its 
duty  to  take  the  accumulations  in  knowledge,  of  almost 
six  thousand  years,  and  to  transfer  the  vast  treasure  to 
posterity.  Suspend  its  functions  for  but  one  generation, 
and  the  experience  and  the  achievements  of  the  past  are 
lost.  The  race  must  commence  its  fortunes  anew,  and 
must  again  spend  six  thousand  years,  before  it  can  grope 
its  way  upward  from  barbarism  to  the  present  point  of 
civilization.  With  the  wisdom,  education  must  also  teach 
something  of  the  follies  of  the  past,  for  admonition  and 
warning  ;  for  it  has  been  well  said,  that  mankind  have 
seldom  arrived  at  truth,  on  any  subject,  until  they  had 
first  exhausted  its  errors. 

Education  is  to  instruct  the  whole  people  in  the  proper 
,  care  of  the  body,  in  order  to  augment  the  powers  of  that 
wonderful  machine,  and  to  prevent  so  much  of  disease, 
of  suffering,  and  of  premature  death.  The  body  is  the 
mind's  instrument ;  and  the  powers  of  the  mind,  like  the 
skill  of  an  artisan,  may  all  be  baffled,  through  the  imper- 
fection of  their  utensils.  The  happiness  and  the  useful- 
ness of  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  men  and 
women  have  been  destroyed,  from  not  knowing  a  few  of 


COMMON-SCHOOL  EDUCATION.  79 

the  simple  laws  of  health,  which  they  might  have  learned 
in  a  few  months  ;  —  nay,  which  might  have  been  so  im- 
pressed upon  them,  as  habits,  in  childhood,  that  they 
would  never  think  there  was  any  other  way.  I  do  not 
speak  of  the  ruin  that  comes  from  slavery  to  throned 
appetites,  where  the  bondage  might  continue  in  defiance 
of  knowledge ;  but  I  speak  of  cases,  where  the  pros- 
tration of  noble  powers  and  the  suffering  of  terrible 
maladies  result  from  sheer  ignorance  and  false  views  of 
the  wise  laws  to  which  God  has  subjected  our  physical 
nature.  No  doubt,  Voltaire  said  truly,  that  the  fate  of 
many  a  nation  had  depended  upon  the  good  or  bad  diges- 
tion of  its  minister ;  and  how  much  more  extensively 
true  would  the  remark  be,  if  applied  to  individuals  ! 
How  many  men  perfectly  understand  the  observances  by 
which  their  horses  and  cattle  are  made  healthy  and  strong, 
while  their  children  are  puny,  distempered,  and  have 
chronic  diseases,  at  the  very  earliest  age  at  which  so 
highly-finished  an  article  as  a  chronic  disease  can  be  pre- 
pared. There  is  a  higher  art  than  the  art  of  the  physi- 
cian ;  —  the  art,  not  of  restoring,  but  of  making'  health. 
Health  is  a  product.  Health  is  a  manufactured  article, 
—  as  much  so  as  any  fabric  of  the  loom  or  the  workshop ; 
and,  except  in  some  few  cases  of  hereditary  taint,  or  of 
organic  lesion  from  accident  or  violence,  the  how  much, 
or  the  how  little,  health  any  man  shall  enjoy,  depends 
upon  his  treatment  of  himself,  or  rather,  upon  the  treat- 
ment of  those  who  manage  his  infancy  and  childhood, 
and  create  his  habits  for  him.  Situated,  as  we  are,  in  a 
high  latitude,  with  the  Atlantic  ocean  on  one  side,  and  a 
range  of  mountains  on  the  other,  we  cannot  escape  fre- 
quent and  great  transitions  in  the  temperature  of  our 
weather.  Our  region  is  the  perpetual  battle-ground  of 
the  torrid  and  the  arctic,  where  they  alternately  prevail  ; 


80  MEANS    AND    OBJECTS   OF 

and  it  is  only  by  a  sort  of  average  that  we  call  it  temper- 
ate. Yet  to  this  natural  position  we  must  adapt  ourselves, 
or  abandon  it,  or  suffer.  Hence  the  necessity  of  making 
health,  in  order  to  endure  natural  inclemencies ;  and 
hence  also  the  necessity  of  including  the  simple  and 
benign  laws  on  which  it  depends,  in  all  our  plans  of  edu- 
cation. Certainly,  oiir  hearts  should  glow  with  gratitude 
to  Heaven,  for  all  the  means  of  health  ;  but  every  expres- 
sion indicating  that  health  is  a  Divine  gift,  in  any  other- 
sense  than  all  our  blessings  are  a  Divine  gift,  should  be 
discarded  from  the  language  ;  and  it  should  be  incorpo- 
rated into  the  forms  of  speech,  that  a  man  prepares  his 
own  health,  as  he  does  his  own  house. 

Education  is  to  inspire  the  love  of  truth,  as  the  su- 
premest  good,  and  to  clarify  the  vision  of  the  intellect  to 
discern  it.  We  want  a  generation  of  men  above  deciding 
great  and  eternal  principles,  upon  narrow  and  selfish 
grounds.  Our  advanced  state  of  civilization  has  evolved 
many  complicated  questions  respecting  social  duties.  We 
want  a  generation  of  men  capable  of  taking  up  these 
complex  questions,  and  of  turning  all  sides  of  them 
towards  the  sun,  and  of  examining  them  by  the  white 
light  of  reason,  and  not  under  the  false  colors  which 
sophistry  may  throw  upon  them.  We  want  no  men  who 
will  change,  like  the  vanes  of  our  steeples,  with  the  course 
of  the  popular  wind ;  but  we  want  men  who,  like  moun- 
tains, will  change  the  course  of  the  wind.  We  want  no 
more  of  those  patriots  who  exhaust  their  patriotism,  in 
lauding  the  past ;  but  we  want  patriots  who  will  do  for 
the  future  what  the  past  has  done  for  us.  We  want  men 
capable  of  deciding,  not  merely  what  is  right  in  principle, 
—  that  is  often  the  smallest  part  of  the  case  ;  —  but  we 
want  men  capable  of  deciding  what  is  right  in  means,  to 
accomplish  what  is  right  in  principle.  We  want  men  who 


COMMON-SCHOOL  EDUCATION.  81 

will  speak  to  this  great  people  in  counsel,  and  not  in 
flattery.  We  want  godlike  men  who  can  taine  the  mad- 
ness of  the  times,  and,  speaking  divine  words  in  a  divine 
spirit,  can  say  to  the  raging  of  human  passions,  "Peace, 
be  still ; "  and  usher  in  the  calm  of  enlightened  reason 
and  conscience.  Look  at  our  community,  divided  into  so 
many  parties  and  factions,  and  these  again  subdivided,  on 
all  questions  of  social,  national,  and  international,  duty ; 
—  while,  over  all,  stands,  almost  unheeded,  the  sublime 
form  of  Truth,  eternally  and  indissolubly  One  !  Nay, 
further,  those  do  not  agree  in  thought  who  agree  in 
words.  Their  unanimity  is  a  delusion.  It  arises  from 
the  imperfection  of  language.  Could  men,  who  sub- 
scribe to  the  same  forms  of  words,  but  look  into  each 
other's  minds,  and  see,  there,  what  features  their  own 
idolized  doctrines  wear,  friends  would  often  start  back 
from  the  friends  they  have  loved,  with  as  much  abhor- 
rence as  from  the  enemies  they  have  persecuted.  Now, 
what  can  save  us  from  endless  contention,  but  the  love 
of  truth  ?  What  can  save  us,  and  our  children  after  us, 
from  eternal,  implacable,  universal  war,  but  the  greatest 
of  all  human  powers,  —  the  power  of  impartial  thought  ? 
Many,  —  may  I  not  say  most,  —  of  those  great  questions, 
which  make  the  present  age  boil  and  seethe,  like  a  cal- 
dron, will  never  be  settled,  until  we  have  a  generation  of 
men  who  were  educated,  from  childhood,  to  seek  for  truth 
and  to  revere  justice.  In  the  middle  of  the  last  century, 
a  great  dispute  arose  among  astronomers,  respecting  one 
of  the  planets.  Some,  in  their  folly,  commenced  a  war 
of  words,  and  wrote  hot  books  against  each  other  ;  others, 
in  their  wisdom,  improved  their  telescopes,  and  soon  set- 
tled the  question  forever.  Education  should  imitate  the 
latter.  If  there  are  momentous  questions  which,  with 
present  lights,  we  cannot  demonstrate  and  determine,  let 

rot,  i,  0 


82  MEANS   AND   OBJECTS   OF 

us  rear  up  stronger,  and  purer,  and  more  impartial,  minds, 
for  the  solemn  arbitrament.  Let  it  be  for  ever  and  ever 
inculcated,  that  no  bodily  wounds  or  maim,  no  deformity 
of  person,  nor  disease  of  brain,  or  lungs,  or  heart,  can  be 
so  disabling  or  so  painful  as  error  ;  and  that  he  who  heals 
us  of  our  prejudices  is  a  thousand  fold  more  our  benefac- 
tor, than  he  who  heals  us  of  mortal  maladies.  Teach  chil- 
dren, if  you  will,  to  beware  of  the  bite  of  a  mad  dog  ; 
but  teach  them  still  more  faithfully,  that  no  horror  of 
water  is  so  fatal  as  a  horror  of  truth,  because  it  does  not 
come  from  our  leader  or  our  party.  Then  shall  we  have 
more  men  who  will  think,  as  it  were,  under  oath  ;  —  not 
thousandth  and  ten  thousandth  transmitters  of  falsity  ; 
—  not  copyists  of  copyists,  and  blind  followers  of  blind 
followers ;  but  men  who  can  track  the  Deity  in  his  ways 
of  wisdom.  A  love  of  truth,  —  a  love  of  truth;  this  is 
the  pool  of  a  moral  Bethesda,  whose  waters  have  miracu- 
lous healing.  And  though  we  lament  that  we  cannot 
bequeath  to  posterity  this  precious  boon,  in  its  perfect- 
ness,  as  the  greatest  of  all  patrimonies,  yet  let  us  rejoice 
that  we  can  inspire  a  love  of  it,  a  reverence  for  it,  a  devo- 
tion to  it;  and  thus  circumscribe  and  weaken  whatever 
is  wrong,  and  enlarge  and  strengthen  whatever  is  right, 
in  that  mixed  inheritance  of  good  and  evil,  which,  in  the 
order  of  Providence,  one  generation  transmits  to  another. 
If  we  contemplate  the  subject  with  the  eye  of  a  states- 
man, what  resources  are  there,  in  the  whole  domain  of 
Nature,  at  all  comparable  to  that  vast  influx  of  power 
which  comes  into  the  world  with  every  incoming  genera- 
tion of  children  ?  Each  embryo  life  is  more  wonderful 
than  the  globe  it  is  sent  to  inhabit,  and  more  glorious 
than  the  sun  upon  which  it  first  opens  its  eyes.  Each 
one  of  these  millions,  with  a  fitting  education,  is  capable 
of  adding  something  to  the  sum  of  human  happiness,  and 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  83 

of  subtracting  something  from  the  sum  of  human  misery ; 
and  many  great  souls  amongst  them  there  are,  who  may 
become  instruments  for  turning  the  course  of  nations,  as 
the  rivers  of  water  are  turned.  It  is  the  duty  of  moral 
and  religious  education  to  employ  and  administer  all 
these  capacities  of  good,  for  lofty  purposes  of  human  be- 
neficence, as  a  wise  minister  employs  the  resources  of  a 
great  empire.  "  Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  me," 
said  the  Saviour,  "  and  forbid  them  not,  for  of  such  is  the 
kingdom  of  Heaven."  And  who  shall  dare  say,  that 
philanthropy  and  religion  cannot  make  a  better  world 
than  the  present,  from  beings  like  those  in  the  kingdom 
of  Heaven ! 

Education  must  be  universal.  It  is  well,  when  the 
wise  and  the  learned  discover  new  truths  ;  but  how  much 
better  to  diffuse  the  truths  already  discovered,  amongst 
the  multitude !  Every  addition  to  true  knowledge  is  an 
addition  to  human  power ;  and  while  a  philosopher  is 
discovering  one  new  truth,  millions  may  be  propagated 
amongst  the  people.  Diffusion,  then,  rather  than  dis- 
covery, is  the  duty  of  our  government.  With  us,  the 
qualification  of  voters  is  as  important  as  the  qualification 
of  governors,  and  even  comes  first,  in  the  natural  order. 
Yet  there  is  no  Sabbath  of  rest  in  our  contests  about  the 
latter,  while  so  little  is  done  to  qualify  the  former.  The 
theory  of  our  government  is,  —  not  that  all  men,  however 
unfit,  shall  be  voters,  —  but  that  every  man,  by  the  power 
of  reason  and  the  sense  of  duty,  shall  become  fit  to  be  a 
voter.  Education  must  bring  the  practice  as  nearly  as 
possible  to  the  theory.  As  the  children  now  arc,  so  will 
the  sovereigns  soon  be.  How  can  we  expect  the  fabric  of 
the  government  to  stand,  if  vicious  materials  are  daily 
wrought  into  its  frame-work  ?  Education  must  prepare 
our  citizens  to  become  municipal  officers,  intelligent  jurors, 


84  MEANS    AND    OBJECTS   OF 

honest  witnesses,  legislators,  or  competent  judges  of  legis- 
lation,—  in  fine,  to  fill  all  the  manifold  relations  of  life. 
For  this  end,  it  must  be  universal.  The  whole  land  must 
be  watered  with  the  streams  of  knowledge.  It  is  not 
enough  to  have,  here  and  there,  a  beautiful  fountain  play- 
ing in  palace-gardens ;  but  let  it  come  like  the  abundant 
fatness  of  the  clouds  upon  the  thirsting  earth. 

Finally,  education,  alone,  can  conduct  us  to  that  enjoy- 
ment which  is,  at  once,  best  in  quality  and  infinite  in 
quantity.  God  has  revealed  to  us,  —  not  by  ambiguous 
signs,  but  by  His  mighty  works  ;  —  not  in  the  disputable 
language  of  human  invention,  but  by  the  solid  substance 
and  reality  of  things,  —  what  He  holds  to  be  valuable, 
and  what  He  regards  as  of  little  account.  The  latter  He 
has  created  sparingly,  as  though  it  were  nothing  worth  ; 
while  the  former  he  has  poured  forth  with  immeasurable 
munificence.  I  suppose  all  the  diamonds  ever  found, 
could  be  hid  under  a  bushel.  Their  quantity  is  little, 
because  their  value  is  small.  But  iron  ore,  —  without 
which  mankind  would  always  have  been  barbarians ; 
without  which  they  would  now  relapse  into  barbarism, — 
he  has  strewed  profusely  all  over  the  earth.  Compare 
the  scantiness  of  pearl,  with  the  extent  of  forests  and 
coal-fields.  Of  one,  little  has  been  created,  because  it  is 
worth  little  ;  of  the  others,  much,  because  they  are  worth 
much.  His  fountains  of  naphtha,  how  few,  and  myrrh 
and  frankincense,  how  exiguous ;  but  who  can  fathom 
His  reservoirs  of  water,  or  measure  The  light  and  the  air ! 
Tiiis  principle  pervades  every  realm  of  Nature.  Creation 
seems  to  have  been  projected  upon  the  plan  of  increasing 
the  quantity,  in  the  ratio  of  the  intrinsic  value.  Em- 
phatically is  this  plan  manifested,  when  we  come  to  that 
part  of  creation  we  call  ourselves.  Enough  of  the  mate- 
rials of  worldly  good  has  been  created  to  answer  this 


COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION.  85 

great  principle,  —  that,  up  to  the  point  of  competence,  up 
to  the  point  of  independence  and  self-respect,  few  things 
are  more  valuable  than  property  ;  beyond  that  point,  few 
things  are  of  less.  And  hence  it  is,  that  all  acquisitions 
of  property,  beyond  that  point,  —  considered  and  used  as 
mere  property, —  confer  an  inferior  sort  of  pleasure,  in 
inferior  quantities.  However  rich  a  man  may  be,  a  cer- 
tain number  of  thicknesses  of  woollens  or  of  silks  is  all 
he  can  comfortably  wear.  Give  him  a  dozen  palaces,  lie 
can  live  in  but  one  at  a  time.  Though  the  commander 
be  worth  the  whole  regiment,  or  ship's  company,  he  can 
have  the  animal  pleasure  of  eating  only  his  own  rations ; 
and  any  other  animal  eats  with  as  much  relish  as  he. 
Hence  the  wealthiest,  with  all  their  wealth,  are  driven 
back  to  a  cultivated  mind,  to  beneficent  uses  and  appropria- 
tions ;  and  it  is  then,  and  then  only,  that  a  glorious  vista 
of  happiness  opens  out  into  immensity  and  immortality. 

Education,  then,  is  to  show  to  our  youth,  in  early  life, 
this  broad  line  of  demarcation  between  the  value  of  those 
things  which  can  be  owned  and  enjoyed  by  but  one,  and 
those  which  can  be  owned  and  enjoyed  by  all.  If  I  own 
a  ship,  a  house,  a  farm,  or  a  mass  of  metals  called  pre- 
cious, my  right  to  them  is,  in  its  nature,  sole  and  exclu- 
sive. No  other  man  has  a  right  to  trade  with  my  ship,  to 
occupy  my  house,  or  gather  my  harvests,  or  to  appropriate 
my  treasures  to  his  use.  They  are  mine,  and  are  incapa- 
ble, both  of  a  sole  and  of  a  joint  possession.  But  not  so 
of  the  treasures  of  knowledge,  which  it  is  the  duty  of 
education  to  diffuse.  The  same  truth  may  enrich  and  en- 
noble all  intelligences  at  once.  Infinite  diffusion  subtracts 
nothing  from  depth.  None  are  made  poor  because  others 
are  made  rich.  In  this  part  of  the  Divine  economy,  the 
privilege  of  primogeniture  attaches  to  all ;  and  every  son 
and  daughter  of  Adam  are  heirs  to  an  infinite  patrimony. 


86  COMMON-SCHOOL   EDUCATION. 

If  I  own  an  exquisite  picture  or  statue,  it  is  mine  exclusive- 
ly. Even  though  publicly  exhibited,  but  few  could  be 
charmed  by  its  beauties,  at  the  same  time.  It  is  incapable 
of  bestowing  a  pleasure,  simultaneous  and  universal.  But 
not  so  of  the  beauty  of  a  moral  sentiment ;  not  so  of  the 
glow  of  sublime  emotion  ;  not  so  of  the  feelings  of  con- 
scious purity  and  rectitude.  These  may  shed  rapture  upon 
all,  without  deprivation  of  any;  be  imparted,  and  still 
possessed;  transferred  to  millions,  yet  never  surrendered  ; 
carried  out  of  the  world,  yet  still  left  in  it.  These  may 
imparadise  mankind,  and,  undiluted,  unattenuated,  be 
sent  round  the  whole  orb  of  being.  Let  education,  then, 
teach  children  this  great  truth,  written  as  it  is  on  the  fore- 
front of  the  universe,  that  God  has  so  constituted  this 
world,  into  which  He  has  sent  them,  that  whatever  is  real- 
ly and  truly  valuable  may  be  possessed  by  all,  and  pos- 
sessed in  exhaustless  abundance. 

And  now,  you,  my  friends  !  who  feel  that  you  are  patri- 
ots and  lovers  of  mankind, — what  bulwarks,  what  ram- 
parts for  freedom  can  you  devise,  so  enduring  and  im- 
pregnable, as  intelligence  and  virtue  !  Parents  !  among 
the  happy  groups  of  children  whom  you  have  at  home, — 
more  dear  to  you  than  the  blood  in  the  fountain  of  life,  — 
you  have  not  a  son  nor  a  daughter  who,  in  this  world  of 
temptation,  is  not  destined  to  encounter  perils  more  dan- 
gerous than  to  walk  a  bridge  of  a  single  plank,  over  a 
dark  and  sweeping  torrent  beneath.  But  it  is  in  your  power 
and  at  your  option,  with  the  means  which  Providence  will 
graciously  vouchsafe,  to  give  them  that  firmness  of  intellec- 
tual movement  and  that  keenness  of  moral  vision,  —  that 
light  of  knowledge  and  that  omnipotence  of  virtue,  —  by 
which,  in  the  hour  of  trial,  they  will  be  able  to  walk,  with 
unfaltering  step,  over  the  deep  and  yawning  abyss  below, 
and  to  reach  the  opposite  shore,  in  safety,  and  honor,  and 
happiness. 


LECTURE    H. 

1838. 


LECTURE    II 

SPECIAL  PREPARATION  A  PREREQUISITE  TO  TEACHING. 

GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  CONVENTION:  — 

AFTER  the  lapse  of  another  year,  we  are  again  assembled 
to  hold  counsel  together  for  the  welfare  of  our  children. 
On  this  occasion,  we  have  much  reason  to  meet  each  other 
with  voices  of  congratulation  and  hearts  of  gladness.  Dur- 
ing the  past  year,  the  cause  of  Popular  Education,  in  this 
Commonwealth,  has  gained  some  suffrages  of  public 
opinion.  On  presenting  its  wants  and  its  claims  to  citizens 
in  every  part  of  the  State,  I  have  found  that  there  were 
many  individuals  who  appreciate  its  importance,  and  who 
only  awaited  an  opportunity  to  give  utterance  and  action 
to  their  feelings ;  —  in  almost  every  town,  some,  —  in 
many,  a  band. 

Some  of  our  hopes,  also,  have  become  facts.  The  last 
Legislature  acted  towards  this  cause,  the  part  of  a  wise 
and  faithful  guardian.  Inquiries  having  been  sent  into  all 
parts  of  the  Commonwealth,  to  ascertain  the  deficiencies 
in  our  Common  School  system,  and  the  causes  of  failure 
in  its  workings ;  and  the  results  of  those  inquiries  having 
been  communicated  to  the  Legislature,  —  together  with 
suggestions  for  the  application  of  a  few  obvious  and  ener- 
getic remedies,  —  that  body  forthwith  enacted  such  laws 
as  the  wants  of  the  system  most  immediately  and  imperi- 
ously demanded.  Probably,  at  no  session  since  the  origin 
of  our  Common  School  system,  have  laws  more  propitious 

89 


90  SPECIAL    PREPARATION 

to  its  welfare  been  made,  than  during  the  last.  True,  the 
substantive  parts  of  the  great  system  of  Public  Instruction, 
pre-existed  ;  but,  in  many  respects,  these  parts  were  like 
the  wheels  of  some  excellent  machine,  unskilfully  put 
together  ;  and  hence,  if  not  absolutely  refusing  to  go,  for 
want  of  proper  adjustment,  yet  going,  at  best,  only  accord- 
ing to  our  expressive  word,  bunglingly.  The  enactments 
of  the  last  session,  have,  to  no  inconsiderable  extent,  ad- 
justed the  relative  parts  of  this  machinery,  in  an  admira- 
ble manner ;  and  it  now  only  remains  for  the  people  to  do 
their  part,  by  vigorously  applying  the  power  that  is  to 
move  it. 

For  instance,  the  law  formerly  compelled  towns,  under 
a  penalty,  to  choose  school  committees ;  and  it  accumu- 
lated such  an  amount  of  duties  upon  these  officers,  that 
the  efficiency,  nay,  I  might  almost  say,  the  very  existence, 
of  the  schools,  for  any  useful  purpose,  depended  upon  their 
intelligence  and  fidelity ;  and  yet,  because  this  law  pro- 
vided no  compensation  for  their  services,  nor  even  indem- 
nity for  their  actual  expenses,  it  left  the  whole  weight  of 
private  interest  gravitating  against  public  duty.  In  the 
apprehension  of  many  persons,  too,  there  seemed  to  be 
something  of  officiousness  and  obtrusion,  when  the  com- 
mittees entered  earnestly  and  faithfully  upon  the  discharge 
of  the  legal  obligations  they  had  assumed.  An  office  was 
lightly  esteemed  to  which  public  opinion  attached  no 
rank,  and  the  law  no  emolument.  It  was  an  office,  too, 
in  which  fidelity  often  gave  offence,  and  one  whose  duties 
were  always  deemed  burdensome,  and  but  rarely  accounted 
honorable.  Hence,  the  punctilious  discharge  of  its  vari- 
ous duties,  required  a  higher  degree  of  public  spirit,  or  a 
greater  enthusiasm  in  the  noble  cause  of  education,  than 
the  present  condition  of  our  society  is  likely  to  furnish. 
Besides,  many  towns  circumvented  the  law ;  for,  though  the 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  91 

law  had  provided  that  the  office  of  school  committee  man 
should  not  lie  dormant,  yet  it  could  make  no  such  wake- 
ful provision  in  regard  to  the  officer.     Hence,  school  com- 
mittees were  not  unfrequently  chosen,  by  the  towns,  with 
a  tacit,  and  sometimes  even  with  an  express  understand- 
ing, that  they  were  to  sleep  during  the  whole  of  the  school 
terms,  and    only   to   rouse  themselves   up   in   sufficient 
season  to  make  such  an  annual  Return,  as  would  secure 
a  share  of  the  income  of  the  school  fund  of  their  respec- 
tive towns.     But  this  condition  of  things  is  now  changed. 
By  the   late   law,   school   committees   are   hereafter  to 
receive  a  moderate  compensation  for  services  rendered,  — 
or,  at  least,  a  sufficient  sum  to  reimburse  the  expenses 
which  they  actually  incur.     Is  it  too  much,  therefore,  for 
us  now  to  say.  in  regard  to  these  officers,  that,  not  only 
their  own  townsmen,  but  the  friends  of  education  general- 
ly, have  a  right  to  expect,  that  they  will  so  fulfil  the  requi- 
sitions of  the  law,  that  a  looker-on  may  know  what  the  law 
is,  by  seeing  what  the  committees  do,  as  well  as  he  could 
by  reading  its  provisions  in  the  pages  of  the  statute  book  ? 
Is  this  demand  too  great,  when  we  consider  the  claims 
which   the   office  has  upon   the  efforts  of  all  wise  and 
benevolent  men  ?     The  committees  are  to  prescribe  the 
books  which  are  to  be  used  in  the  schools.     They  are  to 
see  that  every  child  whose  parents  are  unable  to  supply  it 
with  books,  is  supplied  at  the  expense  of  the  town.    They 
are  to  visit  every  district  school  soon  after  its  opening, 
and  shortly  before  its  close,  and  once  a  month  during  its 
continuance;  —  and  this  duty  of  visitation,  let  me  say, 
means  something  more  than  just  stopping,  when  engaged 
on  some  other  errand  or  business,  fastening  a  horse  at 
the  schoolhouse  door,  and  going  in  for  a  few  minutes  to 
rest  or  to  warm.     Emphatically,  —  I  would  speak  it  with 
tenfold  emphasis,  —  they  are  to  see  that  none  but  the  very 


92  SPECIAL  PREPARATION 

best  persons  who  can  possibly  be  procured,  are  put  in  as 
keepers  of  that  inestimable,  unutterable  treasure,  the 
children  of  the  district. 

Another  provision  of  the  late  law  requires  the  commit- 
tee of  each  town  to  keep  a  record,  in  a  permanent  form, 
of  all  their  acts,  votes,  and  proceedings ;  and,  at  the  end 
of  their  official  year,  to  deliver  the  record-book  to  their 
successors  in  office. 

If  the  affairs  of  the  pettiest  manufacturing  corporation 
cannot  be  systematically  nor  economically  conducted, 
without  a  sworn  clerk,  and  the  registration  of  every  cor- 
porate act,  must  not  the  incomparably  greater  interests  of 
the  schools  suffer,  if  all  the  orders  and  regulations  of  the 
school  committees  have  no  other  depository,  nor  means 
of  verification  in  case  of  dispute,  than  the  imcertainty  of 
human  memory,  and  the  faithlessness  of  oral  testimony? 

A  far  more  important  duty  imposed  upon  school  com- 
mittees by  the  new  law,  —  one  which  will  form  an  epoch 
in  the  history  of  education  in  Massachusetts,  —  is  that 
of  making  to  the  towns,  annually,  a  "  detailed  "  report  of 
the  condition  of  the  schools,  "designating  particular  im- 
provements and  defects  in  the  methods  or  means  of  edu- 
cation, and  stating  such  facts  and  suggestions  in  relation 
thereto,  as,  in  their  opinion,  will  best  promote  the  inter- 
ests, and  increase  the  usefulness  of  said  schools."  The 
significance  of  this  provision  lies  in  the  word  "detailed." 
The  reports  are  to  be  specific,  not  general.  They  are  to 
expose  errors  and  abuses,  and  to  be  accompanied  by  plans 
for  their  rectification.  They  are  to  particularize  improve- 
ments, and  to  devise  the  means  for  their  attainment.  The 
mere  fact  of  knowing  that  a  report  must  be  made  at  the 
end  of  the  year,  will  attract  the  attention  of  committee- 
inen  to  a.  variety  of  facts,  and  will  suggest  numerous  con- 
siderations, which  would  otherwise  elude  both  their  ob- 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  93 

servatiou  and  reflection.  We  are  so  constituted  that,  the 
moment  we  have  a  fixed  purpose  in  our  minds,  there 
arises,  at  once,  a  sort  of  elective  affinity  between  that  pur- 
pose and  its  related  ideas ;  and  the  latter  will  come,  one 
after  another,  and,  as  it  were,  crystallize  around  the  former. 
Besides,  no  man  ever  comprehends  his  own  views  clearly 
and  definitely,  or  ever  avails  himself  of  all  the  resources 
of  his  own  mind,  until  he  reduces  his  thoughts  to  writing, 
or  embodies  them  in  some  visible,  objective  form.  To 
make  a  "  detailed  report,"  which  is  based  upon  facts, 
which  will  be  useful  to  the  town,  and  creditable  to  the 
committee,  will  doubtless  require  great  attention  and 
forethought.  But  if  school  committees  perform  this  duty 
with  half  that  far-reaching  sagacity,  that  almost  incredi- 
ble thoroughness,  which  is  always  displayed  by  those 
town-agents  who  are  chosen  to  employ  counsel,  and  hunt 
up  evidence,  in  pauper-cases,  such  reports  will  be  most 
invaluable  documents.  And  yet  the  manner  in  which 
this  duty  is  performed  will  settle  the  question  prospective- 
ly,  for  many  a  child,  whether  he  shall  be  a  pauper  or  not, — 
not  the  question  of  the  body's  pauperism  only,  but  of  the 
soul's  pauperism. 

These  annual  reports  of  the  committees  are  by  law  to 
be  deposited  with  the  town  clerk.  They  are  to  be  tran- 
scribed, and  the  copy  forwarded  to  the  office  of  the  Sec- 
retary of  State,  for  the  use  of  the  Board  of  Education. 
Each  succeeding  year,  therefore,  there  will  be  placed  in 
the  hands  of  the  Board,  three  hundred  reports,  describing 
the  condition  of  the  schools,  in  every  part  of  the  State, 
with  more  or  less  particularity  and  ability,  according  to 
the  intelligence  and  fidelity  of  the  respective  committees. 
It  seems  to  me  that  selections  may  then  be  made, — if 
the  work  is  not  too  great,  —  of  the  most  instructive  por- 
tions of  the  whole  body  of  these  reports.  Let  a  volume 


94  SPECIAL   PREPARATION 

consisting  of  these  selections  be  transmitted  to  every  town 
in  the  State.  Each  town  will  then  receive  hack  its  own 
contribution,  in  a  permanent  form,  multiplied  by  the  con- 
tributions of  three  hundred  other  towns.  Such  a  course, 
if  adopted,  will  make  known  to  all,  the  views,  the  plans 
and  experiments  of  each.  It  will  be  a  Multiplying-glass, 
increasing  each  beam  of  light,  three  hundred  times.  I  ven- 
ture to  predict  that,  hereafter,  no  document  will  be  found 
to  transcend  these,  in  value,  and  in  the  interest  and  grat- 
itude they  will  inspire.  Posterity  will  here  see  what  was 
done  for  them  by  their  fathers.  Surely,  the  interest  in- 
herent in  these  records,  cannot  be  less  than  that  which 
has  lately  led  the  Commonwealth  to  publish  those  Colo- 
nial and  Revolutionary  papers,  which  trace  out  the  very 
paths  in  the  wilderness,  through  which,  under  the  gui- 
dance of  the  pillar  and  the  cloud,  our  fathers  came  out  of 
the  land  of  Egypt  and  out  of  the  house  of  bondage. 
Compared  with  the  bondage  of  ignorance  and  vice,  Pha- 
raoh was  clement  and  his  task-masters  merciful.* 

Another  provision  of  the  law  requires  that  Registers, 
in  such  form  as  shall  be  prescribed  by  the  Board  of  Edu- 
cation, shall  be  kept  in  all  the  schools.  As  a  means  of 
collecting  accurate  statistics,  registers  are  indispensable. 
They  will  also  reveal  a  fact,  to  the  existence  of  which 
the  public  eye  seems  almost  wholly  closed.  I  mean  the 
amount  or  extent  of  non-attendance  upon  our  schools, 
and  the  enormous  losses  thereby  occasioned.  In  the  hand 
of  an  adroit  teacher,  too,  the  register  may  be  made  an 
efficient  means  of  remedying  that  irregularity  of  attend- 
ance which  it  discloses.  If  the  school  is  what  it  should 
be,  the  remark  will  be  literally  true,  that  every  mark  in 
the  register  indicating  a  vacancy  in  the  child's  seat  at 
school,  will  indicate  a  corresponding  vacuum  in  his  mind. 

*  See  Appendix  A. 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  95 

But,  before  I  go  on  to  speak  of  other  provisions  of  the 
law,  perhaps  there  may  be  a  class  of  persons  ready  to 
ask,  —  "Why  all  this  interference  ?  Why  this  obtrusion 
of  the  State  into  the  concerns  of  the  individual  ?  Arc 
not  our  children,"  say  they,  "  our  own  ?  Who  can  be 
presumed  to  care  more  for  them  than  we  do  ?  And 
whence  your  authority,"  they  demand,  "  to  fetter  our 
free-will,  and  abridge  our  sovereignty  in  their  manage- 
ment ?  "  The  vagabond,  the  drunkard,  the  monster-parent 
who  wishes  to  sell  his  children  to  continuous  labor, —  who, 
for  the  pittance  of  money  they  can  earn,  is  willing  they 
should  grow  up  without  schooling,  without  instruction, 
and  be  used,  year  after  year,  as  parts  of  machinery,  — 
these  may  cry  out  to  the  Legislature,  —  "  By  what  right 
do  you  come  between  ns  and  our  offspring  ?  By  what  right 
do  you  appoint  a  Board  of  Education  and  a  Secretary  to 
pry  into  our  domestic  arrangements,  and  take  from  us  our 
parental  rights  ?  We  wish  to  be  our  own  Board  of  Educa- 
tion, and  Secretary  also."  Such  questions  may,  perhaps, 
be  honestly  put,  and  therefore  should  be  soberly  answered. 

The  children,  whom  parents  have  brought  into  this 
world,  are  carried  forward  by  the  ceaseless  flow  of  time, 
and  the  irresistible  course  of  nature,  and  will  soon  be 
men.  They  are  daily  gathering  forces  and  passions  of 
fearful  energy,  soon  to  be  expended  upon  society.  The 
powers  of  citizenship,  which  reach  every  man's  home  and 
every  man's  hearth,  will  soon  be  theirs.  In  a  brief  space, 
these  children  will  have  the  range  of  the  whole  commu- 
nity, and  will  go  forth  to  pollute  or  to  purify,  to  be  bane 
or  blessing  to  those  who  are  to  live  with  them,  and  to 
come  after  them.  On  the  day  when  their  minority  ceases, 
their  parents  will  deliver  them  over,  as  it  were,  into  the 
hands  of  society,  without  any  regard  to  soundness  or  un- 
souuclnoss  in  their  condition.  Forthwith,  that  society  has 


96  SPECIAL   PREPARATION 

to  assume  the  entire  responsibility  of  their  conduct  for 
life  ;  —  for  society,  in  its  collective  capacity,  is  a  real,  not 
a  nominal  sponsor  and  godfather  for  all  its  children.  So- 
ciety has  no  option  whether  to  accept  or  to  reject  them. 
Society  cannot  say  to  any  parent,  "  Take  back  this  felon- 
brood  of  yours ;  we  never  ordered  any  such  recruits  ;  we 
know  not  what  to  do  with  them  ;  we  dread  them,  and 
therefore  we  will  not  receive  them;" — but  society  must 
equally  accept  them,  whether  they  are  pieces  of  noblest" 
workmanship,  inwrought  with  qualities  of  divinest  beauty 
and  excellence,  or  whether  they  are  mere  trumpery  and 
gilded  pasteboard,  impossible  to  be  thought  of  for  any  use- 
ful purpose.  Now,  in  those  cases  from  which  the  object- 
ors draw  their  analogies,  the  circumstances  are  totally 
different.  If  I  make  a  general  contract  with  my  neighbor 
for  an  article  of  merchandise,  the  iutendment  of  the  law 
is,  that  it  shall  be,  at  least,  of  a  fair,  merchantable  quality ; 
—  and  if  it  be  valueless,  or  even  materially  defective,  in 
stock  or  workmanship,  the  law  exonerates  me  from  all 
obligation  to  receive  it.  I  may  cast  it  back  into  the  hands 
of  the  producer,  and  make  the  loss  wholly  his,  not  mine. 
So  if,  for  a  sound  price,  I  contract  with  a  dealer  to  furnish 
me  a  horse  for  a  specified  journey  or  business,  and  he,  in- 
stead of  providing  for  me  an  animal  suitable  for  the 
object  stipulated,  sends  me  an  old  hack,  whose  only  merit 
is  that  one  might  study  all  the  diseases  of  farriery  upon 
him,  —  there  is  not  a  court  or  jury  in  the  country  but 
would  make  the  fraudulent  jockey  take  back  the  beast, 
and  pay  smart-money,  and  all  the  costs  of  litigation.  But 
not  so,  when  parents  deliver  over  to  the  community  a  son 
who  carries  the  poison  of  asps  beneath  his  glistening 
tongue  ;  or  a  daughter,  who,  from  her  basilisk  eye,  streams 
guilt  into  whomsoever  she  looks  upon.  Twenty-one  years 
after  a  child's  birth,  —  and  often  much  earlier  than  that.  — 


A    PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  97 

be  lie  sot,  brawler,  libeller,  poisoner,  lyncher, — society 
lias,  none  the  less,  to  take  him  into  her  bosom,  and  bear 
his  stings  and  stabs;  —  and  this,  as  I  suppose,  is  the  rea- 
son why  all  those  good  citizens  who  care  what  they  have 
in  their  bosoms,  have  an  undoubted  right  to  take  these 
precautions  beforehand. 

Another  provision  of  law,  which  transfers  the  power  to 
select  and  employ  teachers,  from  the  prudential  to  the 
town's  committee,  —  unless  the  town  shall  otherwise  or- 
der,—  is  worthy  of  commendation.  While  this  arrange- 
ment allows  a  continuance  of  the  old  system,  in  towns 
where  it  is  preferred,  it  proposes  a  course  which  is  far 
better,  and  which  is  sure  to  be  adopted  just  as  fast  as  the 
interests  of  education  and  the  best  means  of  promoting 
it,  become  better  understood  and  more  appreciated  by  the 
community. 

But  not  inferior  in  importance  to  any  of  the  preceding, 
is  another  law,  passed  by  the  Legislature  at  its  last  ses- 
sion. It  is  not  a  compulsory,  but  a  permissive  enactment. 
You  doubtless  anticipate,  that  I  refer  to  the  law  which 
authorizes  the  union  of  two  or  more  existing  school  dis- 
tricts, so  as  to  form  a  Union  or  Central  school,  for  teach- 
ing more  advanced  studies  to  the  older  children. 

Heretofore  the  practice,  in  most  towns,  has  been,  to  sub- 
divide territory  into  smaller  and  smaller  districts;  and 
this  practice  has  drawn  after  it  the  calamitous  consequen- 
ces of  stinted  means,  and  of  course,  cheap  schoolhouses, 
cheap  teachers  and  short  schools.  Under  this  weakening 
process,  many  of  our  children  have  fared  like  southern 
fruits  in  a  northern  clime,  where,  owing  to  the  coldness 
of  the  soil  and  the  shortness  of  the  season,  they  never 
more  than  half  ripen.  Immature  fruits,  at  the  close 
of  the  year,  are  not  only  valueless,  but  they  sometimes 
breed  physical  diseases ;  such  diseases  are  a  blessing  com- 


98  SPECIAL   PREPARATION 

pared  to  those  moral  distempers  which  must  be  engen- 
dered, when  immature  minds,  fermenting  with  unsound 
principles,  are  sent  forth  into  the  community.  The  pre- 
vailing argument,  in  favor  of  the  subdivision  of  districts, 
has  been  the  inconvenience  of  sending  small  children, 
great  distances,  to  school.  The  new  law  remedies  this 
difficulty.  It  allows  the  continuation  of  existing  districts 
for  the  small  scholars,  while  it  invites  the  union  of  two  or 
more  of  them  for  the  accommodation  of  the  larger  ones- 
As  the  benefits  of  this  arrangement  are  set  forth  in  my 
supplementary  Report  to  the  Board  of  Education,  on 
schoolhouses,  (pp.  30,  31,)  I  need  not  dwell  upon  them 
here.  On  reference  to  that  report,  it  will  be  seen  that  the 
advantages  to  the  older  scholars,  attending  the  union  or 
central  school,  will  be  more  than  doubled,  at  a  diminished 
expense.  Nor  will  the  benefits  of  this  arrangement,  to 
the  small  children,  be  less,  —  particularly  because  it  will 
secure  to  them  the  more  congenial  influences  of  female 
teaching. 

I  believe  there  will  soon  be  an  entire  unanimity  in  pub- 
lic sentiment  in  regarding  female  as  superior  to  male 
teaching  for  young  children.  As  a  plain  man  of  excel- 
lent sense  once  said  to  me,  "  A  woman  will  find  out 
where  a  child's  mind  is,  quickest."  I  may  add,  that  she 
will  not  only  find  where  a  child's  mind  is,  more  quickly 
than  a  man  would  do,  but  she  will  follow  its  movements 
more  readily ;  and,  if  it  has  gone  astray,  she  will  lead  it 
back  into  the  right  path  more  gently  and  kindly. 

Under  our  present  system,  the  proportion  of  the  female 
to  the  male  teachers,  in  our  public  schools,  is  about  as 
three  to  two.  This  disparity  of  numbers  may  be  increased 
with  advantage  to  all,  both  as  to  quantity  and  quality 
of  instruction.  It  is  also  universally  known  that  there  is, 
in  our  community,  a  vast  amount  of  female  talent,  of 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  99 

generous,  philanthropic  purpose,  now  unappropriated. 
It  lies  waste  and  dormant  for  want  of  some  genial  sphere 
of  exercise  ;  and  its  possessors  are  thereby  half  driven, 
from  mere  vacuity  of  mind,  and  the  irritation  of  unem- 
ployed faculties,  to  the  frivolities  and  despicableness  of 
fashion,  to  silly  amusements,  or  to  reading  silly  books, 
merely  to  kill  time,  which,  properly  understood,  means 
killing  one's  self.  I  trust  there  are  many  noble-minded 
young  women  amongst  us,  whose  souls  are  impatient  of  a 
degradation  to  that  idleness  and  uselessness  to  which  false 
notions  of  rank  and  wealth  would  consign  them ;  and 
who  would  rejoice,  in  some  form,  either  as  public  servants 
or  as  private  benefactors,  to  enter  this  sphere  of  useful, 
beneficent  employment.  As  the  tone  of  society  now  is, 
the  daughters  of  the  poor  do  not  suffer  more  from  a  want 
of  the  comforts  and  the  refinements  of  life  than  the 
daughters  of  the  rich  do,  from  never  knowing  or  feeling 
what  the  high  destinies  of  woman  are.  But  it  is  begin- 
ning to  be  perceived  that  the  elevation  of  the  character, 
the  condition  and  the  social  rank  of  the  female  sex,  pro- 
duced by  Christianity  and  other  conspiring  causes,  has, 
by  conferring  new  privileges,  also  imposed  new  duties 
upon  them. 

In  reference  to  this  topic,  I  wish  it  to  be  considered 
more  deeply  than  it  has  ever  yet  been,  whether  there  be 
not,  in  truth,  a  divinely  appointed  ministry  for  the  per- 
formance of  the  earlier  services  in  the  sacred  temple  of 
education.  Is  there  not  an  obvious,  constitutional  differ- 
ence of  temperament  between  the  sexes,  indicative  of  a 
pre-arranged  fitness  and  adaptation,  and  making  known 
to  us,  as  by  a  heaven-imparted  sign,  that  woman,  by  her 
livelier  sensibility  and  her  quicker  sympathies,  is  the  fore- 
chosen  guide  and  guardian  of  children  of  a  tender  age  ? 
After  a  child's  mind  has  acquired  some  toughness  and  in- 


100  SPECIAL   PREPARATION 

duration,  by  exposure  for  a  few  years  to  the  world's  hard- 
ening processes,  then  let  it  be  subjected  to  the  firmer  grasp, 
to  the  more  forcible,  subduing-  power  of  masculine  hands. 
But  when  the  infant  spirit,  which  even  too  rude  an  em- 
brace would  wound,  is  first  ushered  into  this  sharp  and 
thorny  life,  let  whatever  the  gross  earth  contains  of  gen- 
tleness, of  ethereal  delicacy,  of  loving  tenderness,  be  its 
welcomer,  and  cherish  it  upon  its  halcyon  bosom,  and 
lead  it  as  by  still  waters.  And  why  should  woman, 
lured  by  a  false  ambition  to  shine  in  courts  or  to  mingle 
in  the  clashing  tumults  of  men,  ever  disdain  this  sacred 
and  peaceful  ministry  ?  Why,  renouncing  this  serene 
and  blessed  sphere  of  duty,  should  she  ever  lift  up  her 
voice  in  the  thronged  market-places  of  society,  higgling 
and  huckstering  to  barter  away  that  divine  and  acknowl- 
edged superiority  in  sentiment  which  belongs  to  her  own 
sex,  to  extort  confessions  from  the  other,  of  a  mere 
equality  in  reason  ?  Why,  in  self-debasement,  should 
she  ever  strive  to  put  off  the  sublime  affections  and  the 
ever-beaming  beauty  of  a  seraph,  that  she  may  clothe 
a  coarser,  though  it  should  be  a  stronger  spirit,  in 
the  stalwort  limbs  and  hugeness  of  a  giant  ?  Nature 
declares  that  whatever  has  the  robustness  of  the  oak, 
shall  have  its  ruggedness  also.  To  no  portion  of  her 
works  has  she  at  once  given  pre-eminence  both  in 
strength  and  in  grace.  If  the  intellect  of  woman, 
like  that  of  man,  has  the  sharpness  and  the  penetrancy 
of  iron  and  of  steel,  it  must  also  be  as  cold  and  as 
hard.  No !  but  to  breathe  pure  and  exalted  sentiments 
into  young  and  tender  hearts.  — to  take  the  censers  which 
Heaven  gives,  and  kindle  therein  the  incense  which 
Heaven  loves, — this  is  her  high  and  holy  mission.  To 
be  the  former  of  wise  and  great  minds,  is  as  much  more 
noble  than  to  be  wise  and  great,  as  the  creative  is  higher 


A    PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  101 

than  the  created.  In  camps  or  senates,  she  could  shine 
but  for  a  day,  and  with  a  fitful  light ;  but  if,  with  endur- 
ing patience  and  fidelity,  she  fulfils  her  sacred  duties  to 
childhood,  then,  from  the  sanctuary  of  her  calm  and  se- 
questered life,  there  will  go  forth  a  refulgent  glory  to  irra- 
diate all  countries  and  all  centuries.  The  treasures  of 
virtue  arc  self-perpetuating  and  self-increasing,  and  when 
she  gathers  them  into  young  hearts,  to  grow  with  their 
growth  and  strengthen  with  their  strength,  she  makes 
Time  so  rich  an  almoner,  that  though  he  goes  strewing 
and  scattering  his  blessings  over  the  earth  and  over  the 
ages,  yet  he  will  never  be  impoverished,  but  only  so  much 
the  more  abound.  The  loftiest  spirits,  the  finest  geniuses 
of  pagan  antiquity  passed  by  the  gods  of  the  deep  and  full- 
flowing  river  with  moderated  reverence,  but,  nicely  true 
to  a  moral  and  a  religious  instinct,  they  bore  their  richest 
offerings  and  paid  their  deepest  homage  to  the  goddess 
who  presided  at  the  fountain. 

But  amongst  all  the  auspicious  events  of  the  past  year, 
ought  not  the  friends  of  popular  education  to  be  most 
grateful,  on  account  of  the  offer  made  by  a  private  gen- 
tleman* to  the  Legislature,  of  the  sum  of  ten  thousand 
dollars,  upon  the  conditions  that  the  State  should  add 
thereto  an  equal  sum,  and  that  the  amount  should  be 
expended,  under  the  direction  of  the  Board  of  Education, 
in  qualifying  teachers  for  our  Common  Schools,  and  of 
the  promptness  and  unanimity  with  which  the  Legisla- 
ture acceded  to  the  proposition  ?  I  say,  the  unanimity ,  for 
the  vote  was  entirely  unanimous  in  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives, and  there  was  but  one  nay  in  the  Senate.  Vast 
donations  have  been  made  in  this  Commonwealth,  both 
by  the  government  and  by  individuals,  for  the  cause  of 
learning  in  some  of  its  higher,  and,  of  course,  more  lim- 

*  Hon.  Edmund  Dwight,  of  Boston. 


102  SPECIAL   PEEPARATION 

ited  departments  ;  but  I  believe  this  to  be  the  first  instance 
where  any  considerable  sum  has  been  given  for  the  cause 
of  education,  generally,  and  irrespective  of  class,  or  sect, 
or  party.  Munificent  donations  have  frequently  been 
made,  amongst  ourselves,  as  well  as  in  other  States  and 
countries,  to  perpetuate  some  distinctive  theory  or  dogma 
of  one's  own,  or  to  requite  a  peculiar  few  who  may  have 
honored  or  flattered  the  giver.  But  this  was  given  to 
augment  the  common  mass  of  intelligence,  and  to  pro- 
mote universal  culture  ;  it  was  given  with  a  high  and 
enlightened  disregard  of  all  local,  party,  personal  or  sec- 
tional views ;  it  was  given  for  the  direct  benefit  of  all  the 
heart  and  all  the  mind,  extant,  or  to  be  extant,  in  our 
beloved  .Commonwealth  ;  and,  in  this  respect,  it  certainly 
stands  out  almost,  if  not  absolutely  alone,  both  in  the 
amount  of  the  donation,  and  in  the  elevation  of  the  motive 
that  prompted  it.  I  will  not  tarnish  the  brightness  of 
this  deed,  by  attempting  to  gild  it  with  praise.  One  of 
the  truest  and  most  impressive  sentiments  ever  uttered 
by  Sir  Walter  Scott  is,  however,  so  appropriate,  and  forces 
itself  so  strongly  upon  my  mind,  that  I  cannot  repress  its 
utterance.  When  that  plain  and  homely  Scotch  girl, 
Jeannie  Deans,  —  the  highest  of  all  the  characters  ever 
conceived  by  that  gifted  author,  —  is  pleading  her  suit 
before  the  British  queen,  —  and  showing  herself  therein 
to  be  ten  times  a  queen,  —  she  utters  the  sentiment  I 
refer  to :  "  But  when,"  says  she,  "  the  hour  of  trouble 
comes  to  the  mind  or  to  the  body,  and  when  the  hour 
of  death  comes,  that  comes  to  high  and  low,  then  it  isna 
what  we  hae  dune  for  oursells,  but  what  we  hae  dune  for 
ithers,  that  we  think  on  maist  pleasantly." 

There  is,  then,  at  last,  on  the  part  of  the  government 
of  Massachusetts,  a  recognition  of  the  expediency  of  pro- 
viding means  for  the  special  qualification  of  teachers  for 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  103 

our  Common  Schools  ;  or,  at  least,  of  submitting  that 
question  to  a  fair  experiment.  Let  us  not,  however, 
deceive  or  flatter  ourselves  with  the  belief,  that  such  an 
opinion  very  generally  prevails,  or  is  very  deeply  seated. 
A  few,  and  those,  as  we  believe,  best  qualified  to  judge, 
hold  this  opinion  as  an  axiom.  But  this  cannot  be  said 
of  great  numbers ;  and  it  requires  no  prophetic  vision  to 
foresee  that  any  plan  for  carrying  out  this  object,  however 
wisely  framed,  will  have  to  encounter  not  only  the  preju- 
dices of  the  ignorant,  but  the  hostility  of  the  selfish. 

The  most  momentous  practical  questions  now  before 
our  state  and  country  are  these :  In  order  to  preserve 
our  republican  institutions,  must  not  our  Common  Schools  - 
be  elevated  in  character  and  increased  in  efficiency  ?  and, 
in  order  to  bring  our  schools  up  to  the  point  of  excellence 
demanded  by  the  nature  of  our  institutions,  must  there 
not  be  a  special  course  of  study  and  training  to  qualify 
teachers  for  their  office  ?  No  other  worldly  interest  pre- 
sents any  question  comparable  to  these  in  importance. 
To  the  more  special  consideration  of  the  latter,  —  namely, 
whether  the  teachers  of  our  public  schools  require  a 
special  course  of  study  and  training  to  qualify  them  for 
their  vocation,  —  I  solicit  your  attention,  during  the  resi- 
due of  this  address. 

I  shall  not  here  insist  upon  any  particular  mode  of  pre- 
paration, or  of  preparation  in  any  particular  class  of  in- 
stitutions, —  whether  Normal  Schools,  special  departments 
hi  academies,  colleges,  or  elsewhere,  —  to  the  exclusion 
of  ail  other  institutions.  What  I  insist  upon,  is,  not  the 
form,  but  the  substance. 

In  treating  this  subject,  duty  will  require  me  to  speak 
of  errors  and  deficiencies,  and  of  the  inadequate  con- 
ceptions now  entertained  of  the  true  office  and  mission 
of  a  teacher.  This  is  a  painful  obligation,  and  in  dis- 


104  SPECIAL   PREPARATION 

charging  it  I  am  sure  I  shall  not  be  misunderstood  by  any 
candid  arid  intelligent  mind.  Towards  the  teachers  of 
our  schools,  —  as  a  class,  —  I  certainly  possess  none  but 
the  most  fraternal  feelings.  Their  want  of  adequate 
qualifications  is  the  want  of  the  times,  rather  than  of 
themselves.  Teachers,  heretofore,  have  only  been  par- 
takers in  a  general  error, — an  error  in  which  you  and  I, 
my  hearers,  have  been  as  profoundly  lost  as  they.  Let 
this  be  their  excuse  hitherto,  and  let  the  ignorance  of  the 
past  be  winked  at;  but  the  best  service  we  can  now  render 
them,  is  to  take  this  excuse  away,  by  showing  the  inade- 
quacy and  the  unsoundness  of  our  former  views.  Let  all 
who  shall  henceforth  strive  to  do  better,  stand  acquitted 
for  past  delinquencies ;  but  will  not  those  deserve  a 
double  measure  of  condemnation  who  shall  set  themselves 
in  array  against  measures,  which  so  many  wise  and  good 
men  have  approved,  —  at  least  until  those  measures  have 
been  fairly  tested  ?  When  the  tree  shall  have  been 
planted  long  enough  to  mature  its  fruit,  then  let  it  be 
known  by  its  fruit. 

No  one  has  ever  supposed  that  an  individual  could 
build  up  a  material  temple,  and  give  it  strength,  and  con- 
venience, and  fair  proportions,  without  firsl/ mastering  the 
architectural  art);  but  we  have  employed  thousands  of 
teachers  for  our  children  /to  build  up  the  immortal  Tem- 
ple of  the  Spirit,  who  have  never  given  to  this  divine,  edu- 
cational art,  a  day  nor  an  hour  of  preliminary  study  or 
attention.  How  often  have  we  sneered  at  Dogberry  in 
the  play,  because  he  holds  that  "  to  read  and  write  comes 
by  nature  ;  "  when  we  ourselves  have  undertaken  to  teach, 
or  have  employed  teachers,  whose  only  fitness  for  giving1 
instruction,  not  only  in  reading  and  writing,  but  in  all 
other  things,  has  come  by  nature,  if  it  has  come  at  all ;  — 
that  is,  in  exact  accordance  with  Dogberry's  philosophy. 


A    PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  105 

111  maintaining  the  affirmative  of  this  question,  —  name- 
ly, that  all  teachers  do  require  a  special  course  of  study 
and  training-,  to  quality  them  for  their  profession,  —  I  will 
not  higgle  with  my  adversary  in  adjusting  preliminaries. 
He  may  be  the  disciple  of  any  school  in  metaphysics,  and 
he  may  hold  what  faith  he  pleases,  respecting  the  mind's 
nature  and  essence.  Be  he  spiritualist  or  materialist,  it 
here  matters  not,  —  nay,  though  he  should  deny  that 
there  is  any  such  substance  as  mind  or  spirit,  at  all,  I  will 
not  stop  to  dispute  that  point  with  him, —  preferring 
rather  to  imitate  the  example  of  those  old  knights  of  the 
tournament,  who  felt  such  confidence  in  the  justness  of 
their  cause,  that  they  gave  their  adversaries  the  advantage 
of  sun  and  wind.  For,  whatever  the  mind  may  be,  in  its 
inscrutable  nature  or  essence,  or  whether  there  be  any 
such  thing  as  mind  or  spirit  at  all,  properly  so  called,  this 
we  have  seen  and  do  know,  that  there  come  beings  into 
this  world,  with  every  incoming  generation  of  children, 
who,  although  at  first  so  ignorant,  helpless,  speechless, — 
so  incapable  of  all  motion,  upright  or  rotary,  —  that  we 
can  hardly  persuade  ourselves  they  have  not  lost  their 
way,  and  come,  by  mistake,  into  the  wrong  world  ;  yet, 
after  a  few  swift  years  have  passed  away,  we  see  thousands 
of  these  same  ignorant  and  helpless  beings,  expiating  hor- 
rible offences  in  prison  cells,  or  dashing  themselves  to 
death  against  the  bars  of  a  maniac's  cage ;  —  others  of 
them,  we  see,  holding  "  colloquy  sublime,"  in  halls  where 
a  nation's  fate  is  arbitrated,  or  solving  some  of  the  might- 
iest problems  that  belong  to  this  wonderful  universe  ;  — 
and  others  still,  there  are,  who,  by  daily  and  nightly  con- 
templation of  the  laws  of  God,  have  kindled  that  fire  of 
divine  truth  within  their  bosoms,  by  which  they  become 
those  moral  luminaries  whose  light  shine th  from  one  part 
of  the  heavens  unto  the  other.  And  this  amazing  change 


10G  SPECIAL   PREPARATION 

in  these  feeble  and  helpless  creatures, — this  transfigura- 
tion of  them  for  good  or  for  evil,  —  is  wrought  by  laws 
of  organization  and  of  increase,  as  certain  in  their  opera- 
tion, and  as  infallible  in  their  results,  as  those  by  which 
the  skilful  gardener  substitutes  flowers,  and  delicious 
fruits,  and  healing  herbs,  for  briers  and  thorns  and 
poisonous  plants.  And  as  we  hold  the  gardener  respon- 
sible for  the  productions  of  his  garden,  so  is  the  commu- 
nity responsible  for  the  general  character  and  conduct  of 
its  children. 

Some,  indeed,  maintain,  —  erroneously  as  we  believe,  — 
that  a  difference  in  education  is  the  sole  cause  of  all  the 
differences  existing  among  men.  They  hold  that  all  per- 
sons come  into  the  world  just  alike  in  disposition  and 
capacity,  though  they  go  through  it,  and  out  of  it,  so 
amazingly  diverse.  They  hold,  in  short,  that  if  any  two 
men  had  changed  cradles,  they  would  have  changed  char- 
acters and  epitaphs ;  —  that,  not  only  does  the  same 
quantity  of  substance  or  essence  go  to  the  constitution  of 
every  human  mind,  but  that  all  minds  are  of  the  same 
quality  also,  —  all  having  the  same  powers,  and  bearing, 
originally,  the  same  image  and  superscription,  like  so 
many  half-dollars  struck  at  the  government  mint. 

But  deeply  as  education  goes  into  the  core  of  the  heart 
and  the  marrow  of  the  bones,  we  do  not  claim  for  it  any 
such  prerogative.  There  are  certain  substructures  of 
temperament  and  disposition,  which  education  finds,  at 
the  beginning  of  its  work,  and  which  it  can  never  wholly 
annul.  Nor  does  it  comport  with  the  endless  variety  and 
beauty  manifested  in  all  other  parts  of  the  Creator's 
works,  to  suppose  that  he  made  all  ears  and  eyes  to  be 
delighted  with  the  same  tunes  and  colors  ;  or  provided  so 
good  an  excuse  for  plagiarism,  as  that  all  minds  were 
made  to  think  the  same  thoughts.  This  inherent  and 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  107 

original  diversity,  however,  only  increases  the  difficulty 
of  education,  and  gives  additional  force  to  the  argument 
for  previous  preparation ;  for,  were  it  true  that  all  children 
are  born  just  alike,  in  disposition  and  capacity,  the  only 
labor  would  be  to  discover  the  right  method  for  educating 
a  single  child,  and  to  stereotype  it  for  all  the  rest. 

This,  however,  we  must  concede  to  those  who  affirm 
the  original  equality  and  exact  similitude  of  all  minds ;  — 
namely,  that  all  minds  have  the  same  elementary  or  con- 
stituent faculties.  This  is  all  that  we  mean  when  we  say 
that  human  nature  is  everywhere  the  same.  This  is,  in 
part,  what  the  Scriptures  mean  when  they  say,  "  God  hath 
made  of  one  blood  all  nations  of  men."  The  contrasts 
among  men  result,  not  from  the  possession  of  a  different 
number  of  original  faculties,  but  from  possessing  the  same 
faculties,  in  different  proportions,  and  in  different  degrees 
of  activity.  The  civilized  men  of  the  present  day,  have 
neither  more  nor  less  faculties,  in  number,  than  their  barba- 
rian ancestors  had.  If  so,  it  would  be  interesting  to  ascer- 
tain about  what  year,  or  century,  a  new  good  faculty  was 
given  to  the  race,  or  an  old  bad  one  was  taken  away.  An 
assembly  of  civilized  men,  on  this  side  of  the  globe,  con- 
vening to  devise  measures  for  diminishing  the  number  of 
capital  crimes,  and  thus  to  reduce  the  number  of  capital 
punishments,  were  born  with  the  same  number  and  kind 
of  faculties,  —  though  doubtless  differing  greatly  in  pro- 
portion and  in  activity,  —  with  a  company  of  Battas 
islanders,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  globe,  who,  perhaps 
at  the  same  time,  may  be  going  to  attend  the  holiday  rites 
of  a  public  execution,  and,  as  is  their  wont,  to  dine  on  the 
criminal.  As  each  human  face  has  the  same  number  of 
features,  each  human  body  the  same  number  of  limbs,  mus- 
cles, organs,  &c.,  so  each  human  soul  has  the  same  capaci- 
ties of  Reason,  Conscience,  Hope,  Fear,  Love,  Self-love,  &c. 


108  SPECIAL   PREPARATION 

The  differences  lie  in  the  relative  strength  and  supremacy 
of  these  powers.  The  human  eye  is  composed  of  about 
twenty  distinct  parts  or  pieces  ;  yet  these  constituent  parts 
are  so  differently  arranged  that  one  man  is  far-sighted, 
another  near-sighted.  When  an  oculist  has  mastered  a 
knowledge  of  one  eye,  he  knows  the  general  plan  upon 
which  all  eyes  have  been  formed  ;  but  lie  must  still  learn 
the  peculiarities  of  each,  or,  in  his  practice,  he  will  ruin 
all  he  touches.*  When  a  surgeon,  or  an  assassin,  knows 
where  one  man's  heart  is,  he  knows,  substantially,  where 
the  hearts  of  all  other  men  may  be  found.  And  so  of  the 
mind  and  its  faculties.  It  is  because  of  this  community 
of  original  endowments,  that  all  the  great  works  of  nature 
and  art  and  science,  address  a  common  susceptibility  or 
capacity,  existing  in  all  minds.  It  is  because  of  this  kin- 
dred nature  that  the  same  earth  is  given  to  us  all,  as  a 
common  residence.  The  possession  by  each  of  his  com- 
plement of  powers  and  susceptibilities,  confers  the  common 
nature,  while  the  different  portions  or  degrees  in  which 
they  exist,  and  the  predominance  of  one  or  a  few  over  the 
others,  break  us  up  into  moral  and  intellectual  classes. 
It  is  impossible  to  vindicate  the  propriety  of  making  or  of 
carrying  a  Revelation  to  the  whole  human  race,  unless 
that  race  has  common  capacities  and  wants  to  which  the 
revelation  is  adapted.  And  hence  we  learn  the  appalling 
truth,  —  a  truth  which  should  strike  "  loud  on  the  heart 
as  thunder  on  the  ear,"  —  that  every  child  born  into  this 

*  I  have  heard  that  distinguished  surgeon,  Dr.  John  C.  Warren,  of  Boston, 
relate  the  following  anecdote,  which  happened  to  him  in  London:  —  Being 
invited  to  witness  a  very  difficult  operation  upon  the  human  eye,  by  a  celebrat- 
ed English  oculist,  he  was  so  much  struck  by  the  skill  and  science  which  were 
exhibited  by  the  operator,  that  he  sought  a  private  interview  with  him,  to 
inquire  by  what  means  he  had  become  so  accomplished  a  master  of  his  art. 
"  Sir,"  said  the  oculist,  "  I  spoiled  a  hat-full  of  eyes  to  learn  it."  Thus  it  is 
with  incompetent  teachers ;  they  may  spoil  schoolrooms-full  of  children  to  learn 
how  to  teach,  —  and  perhaps  may  not  always  learn  even  then. 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  109 

world  has  tendencies  and  susceptibilities  pointing  to  the 
furthest  extremes  of  good  and  evil.  Each  one  has  the 
capacity  of  immeasurable  virtue  or  vice.  As  each  body 
has  an  immensity  of  natural  space  open  all  around  it,  so 
each  spirit,  when  waked  into  life,  has  an  immensity  of 
moral  space  open  all  around  it.  Each  soul  has  a  pinion 
by  which  it  may  soar  to  the  highest  empyrean,  or  swoop 
downwards  to  the  Tartarean  abyss.  In  the  feeblest  voice 
of  infancy,  there  is  a  tone  which  can  be  made  to  pour  a 
sweeter  melody  into  the  symphonies  of  angels,  or  thunder 
a  harsher  discord  through  the  blasphemies  of  demons. 
To  plume  these  wings  for  an  upper  or  a  nether  flight ;  to 
lead  these  voices  forth  into  harmony  or  dissonance ;  to 
woo  these  beings  to  go  where  they  should  go,  and  to  be 
what  they  should  be,  —  does  it,  or  does  it  not,  my  friends, 
require  some  knowledge,  some  anxious  forethought,  some 
enlightening  preparation  ? 

You  must  pardon  me,  if,  on  this  subject,  I  speak  to  you 
with  great  plainness ;  and  you  must  allow  me  to  appeal 
directly  to  your  own  course  of  conduct  in  other  things. 
You  have  property  to  be  preserved  for  the  support  of  your 
children  while  you  live,  or,  when  you  die,  for  their  patri- 
mony ;  you  have  health  and  life  to  be  guarded  and  con- 
tinued, that  they  may  not  be  bereaved  of  their  natural 
protectors  ;  —  and  you  have  the  children  themselves,  with 
their  unbounded,  unfathomable  capacities  of  happiness 
and  misery.  Now,  in  respect  to  your  property,  what  is  it 
your  wont  to  do,  when  a  young  lawyer  comes  into  the 
village,  erects  his  sign,  and,  (the  most  unexclusive  of 
men,)  gives  to  the  public  a  general  invitation  ?  Though 
he  has  a  diploma  from  a  college,  and  the  solemn  approval 
of  bench  and  bar,  yet  how  warily  do  the  public  approach 
him.  How  much  he  is  reconnoitred  before  he  is  retained. 
How  many  premeditated  plans  are  laid  to  appear  to  meet 


110  SPECIAL   PREPARATION 

him  accidentally,  to  talk  over  indifferent  subjects  with 
him,  —  the  weather,  the  crops,  or  Congressional  matters, 
—  in  order  to  measure  him,  and  probe  him,  and  see  if 
there  be  any  hopefulness  in  him.  And  should  all  things 
promise  favorably,  the  young  attorney  is  intrusted,  in  the 
first  instance,  only  with  some  outlawed  note,  or  some 
doubtful  account,  before  a  justice  of  the  peace.  No  man 
ever  thinks  of  trusting  a  case  which  involves  the  old 
homestead,  to  his  inexperienced  hands.  He  would  as  soon 
set  fire  to  it. 

So,  too,  of  a  young  physician.  No  matter  from  what 
medical  college,  home  or  foreign,  he  may  bring  his  cre- 
dentials. From  day  to  day  the  neighbors  watch  him 
without  seeming  to  look  at  him.  In  good-wives'  parties, 
the  question  is  confidentially  discussed,  whether,  in  a  case 
of  exigency,  it  would  be  safe  to  send  for  him.  And  when, 
at  last,  he  is  gladdened  with  a  call,  it  is  only  to  look  at 
some  surface  ailment,  or  to  pother  a  little  about  the  ex- 
tremities. Nobody  allows  him  to  lay  his  unpractised  hand 
upon  the  vitals.  Now  this  common  sentiment,  —  this 
common  practice  of  mankind,  —  is  only  the  instinctive 
dictate  of  prudence.  It  is  only  a  tacit  recognition  of  a 
truth  felt  by  all  sensible  men,  that  there  are  a  thousand 
ways  to  do  a  thing  wrong,  but  only  one  to  do  it  right. 
And  if  it  be  but  reasonable  to  exercise  such  vigilance  and 
caution,  in  selecting  a  healer  for  our  bodies  which  perish, 
or  a  counsellor  for  our  worldly  estates,  who  shall  assign 
limits  to  the  circumspection  and  fidelity  with  which  the 
teachers  of  our  children  should  be  chosen,  who,  in  the 
space  of  a  few  short  years,  or  even  months,  will  determine, 
as  by  a  sort  of  predestination,  upon  so  much  of. their 
future  fortunes  and  destiny  ? 

Again ;  it  is  the  universal  sense  of  mankind,  that  skill 
and  facility,  in  all  other  things,  depend  upon  study  and 


A  PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  Ill 

practice.  We  always  demand  more,  where  opportunities 
have  been  greater.  We  stamp  a  man  with  inferiority, 
though  he  does  ten  times  better  than  another,  if  he  has 
had  twenty  times  the  advantages.  We  know  that  a  skilful 
navigator  will  carry  a  vessel  through  perilous  straits,  in  a 
gale  of  wind,  and  save  cargo  and  lives ;  while  an  ignorant 
one  will  wreck  both,  in  a  broad  channel.  With  what  a 
song  of  delight  we  have  all  witnessed,  how  easily  and 
surely  that  wise  and  good  man,  at  the  head  of  a  great 
institution  in  our  own  State,  will  tame  the  ferocity  of  the 
insane ;  and  how,  when  each  faculty  of  a  fiery  spirit 
bursts  away  like  an  affrighted  steed  from  its  path,  this 
mighty  tamer  of  madmen  will  temper  and  quell  their  wild 
impetuosity  and  restore  them  to  the  guidance  of  reason. 
Nay,  the  great  moral  healer  can  do  this,  not  to  one  only, 
but  to  hundreds  at  a  time ;  while,  even  in  a  far  shorter 
period  than  he  asks  to  accomplish  such  a  wonderful  work, 
an  ignorant  and  passionate  teacher  will  turn  a  hundred 
gentle,  confiding  spirits  into  rebels  and  anarchists.  And, 
my  hearers,  we  recognize  the  existence  of  these  facts,  we 
apply  these  obvious  principles,  to  every  thing  but  to  the 
education  of  our  children. 

Why  cannot  we  derive  instruction  even  from  the  folly 
of  those  wandering  show-men  who  spend  a  life  in  teaching 
brute  animals  to  perform  wonderful  feats  ?  We  have  all 
seen,  or  at  least  we  have  all  heard  of,  some  learned  horse, 
or  learned  pig,  or  learned  dog.  Though  the  superiority 
over  their  fellows,  possessed  by  these  brute  prodigies,  may 
have  been  owing,  in  some  degree,  to  the  possession  of 
greater  natural  parts,  yet  it  must  be  mainly  attributed  to 
the  higher  competency  of  their  instructor.  Their  teacher 
had  acquired  a  deeper  insight  into  their  natures;  his 
sagacious  practice  had  discovered  the  means  by  which 
their  talents  could  be  unfolded  and  brought  out.  How- 


112  SPECIAL   PREPARATION 

ever  unworthy  and  even  contemptible,  therefore,  the  mere 
trainer  of  a  dog  may  be,  yet  he  illustrates  a  great  princi- 
ple. By  showing  us  the  superiority  of  a  well-trained  dog, 
lie  shows  what  might  be  the  superiority  of  a  well-trained 
child.  He  shows  us  that  higher  acquisitions,  —  what  may 
be  called  academical  attainments,  —  in  a  few  favored  in- 
dividuals of  the  canine  race,  are  not  so  much  the  results 
of  a  more  brilliant  genius  on  the  part  of  the  dog-pupil,  as 
they  are  the  natural  reward  and  consequence  of  his 
enjoying  the  instructions  of  a  professor  who  has  concen- 
trated all  his  energies  upon  dog-teaching. 

Surely,  it  will  not  be  denied  that  a  workman  should 
understand  two  things  in  regard  to  the  subject-matter  of 
his  work; — fast,  its  natural  properties,  qualities,  and 
powers ;  and  secondly,  the  means  of  modifying  and  regu- 
lating them,  with  a  view  to  improvement.  In  relation  to 
the  mechanic  arts,  this  is  admitted  by  all.  Everybody 
knows  that  the  strength  of  the  blow  must  be  adjusted  to 
the  malleability  of  the  metal.  It  will  not  do  to  strike 
glass  and  flint,  either  with  the  same  force  or  with  the  same 
implements  ;  and  the  proper  instrument  will  never  be 
selected  by  a  person  ignorant  of  the  purpose  to  be  effected 
by  its  use.  If  a  man  working  on  wood,  mistakes  it  for 
iron,  and  attempts  to  soften  it  in  the  fire,  his  product  is 
—  ashes.  And  so  if  a  teacher  supposes  a  child  to  have 
but  one  tendency,  and  one  adaptation,  when  he  has  many  ; 
—  if  a  teacher  treats  a  child  as  though  his  nature  were 
wholly  animal,  or  wholly  intellectual,  or  wholly  moral  and 

,  religious,  he  disfigures  and  mutilates  the  nature  of  that 
child,  and  wrenches  his  whole  structure  into  deformity. 

The  being  Man  is  more  complex  and  diversified  in 
constitution,  and  more  variously  endowed  in  faculties, 
than  any  other  earthly  work  of  the  Creator.  It  is  in  this 
assemblage  of  powers  and  prerogatives  that  his  strength 


A    PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  113 

and  majesty  reside.  They  constitute  his  sovereignty  and 
lordship  over  the  creation  around  him.  By  our  bodily 
organization  we  are  adapted  to  the  material  world  in 
which  we  are  placed  ;  —  our  eye  to  the  light,  which  makes 
known  to  us  every  change  in  the  form,  motion,  color, 
position,  of  all  objects  within  visual  range  ;  —  our  ear  and 
tongue  to  the  air,  which  flows  around  us  in  silence,  yet  is 
forever  ready  to  be  waked  into  voice  and  music ;  —  our 
hand  to  all  the  cunning  works  of  art  which  subserve 
utility  or  embellishment.  Still  more  wonderfully  does  the 
spiritual  nature  of  man  befit  his  spiritual  relations. 
Whatever  there  is  of  law,  of  order,  of  duty,  in  the  works 
of  God,  or  in  the  progressive  conditions  of  the  race,  all 
have  their  spiritual  counterparts  within  him.  By  his  per- 
ceptive and  intellectual  faculties,  he  learns  the  properties 
of  created  things,  and  discovers  the  laws  by  which  they 
are  governed.  By  tracing  the  relation  between  causes 
and  effects,  he  acquires  a  kind  of  prophetic  vision  and 
power  ;  for,  by  conforming  to  the  unchanging  laws  of 
Nature,  he  enlists  her  in  his  service,  and  she  works  with 
him  in  fulfilling  his  predictions.  Regarded  as  an  individ- 
ual, and  as  a  member  of  a  race  which  reproduces  itself  and 
passes  away,  his  lower  propensities, — those  which  he 
holds  in  common  with  the  brutes,  —  are  the  instincts  and 
means  to  preserve  himself  and  to  perpetuate  his  kind  ; 
while  by  his  tastes,  and  by  the  social,  moral,  and  religious 
sentiments  of  which  he  is  capable,  he  is  attuned  to  all  the 
beauties  and  sublimities  of  creation,  his  heart  is  made 
responsive  to  all  the  delights  of  friendship  and  domestic 
affection,  and  ho  is  invited  to  hold  that  spiritual  inter- 
course with  his  Maker,  which  at  once  strengthens  and 
enraptures. 

Now  the-  voice  of  God  and  of  Nature  declares  audibly 
which  of  these  various  powers  within  us  are  to  command. 


114  SPECIAL   PEEPARATION 

and  which  are  to  obey ;  and  with  which,  in  every  ques- 
tionable case,  resides  the  ultimate  arbitrament.  Even  the 
lowest  propensities  are  not  to  be  wholly  extirpated. 
Within  the  bounds  prescribed  by  the  social  and  the  divine 
law,  they  have  their  rightful  claims.  But  the  moral  and 
the  religious  sentiments,  —  Benevolence,  Conscience,  — 
Reverence  for  the  All-creating  and  All-bestowing  Power, 
these  have  the  prerogative  of  supremacy  and  absolute 
dominion.  These  are  to  walk  the  halls  of  the  soul,  like  a 
god,  nor  suffer  rebellion  to  live  under  their  eye.  Yet  how 
easy  for  this  many-gifted  being  to  fall, — more  easy,  indeed, 
because  of  his  many  gifts.  Some  subject-faculty,  some 
subordinate  power,  in  this  spiritual  realm,  unfortunately 
inflamed,  or,  —  what  is  far  more  common,  —  unwisely 
stimulated  by  an  erroneous  education,  grows  importunate, 
exorbitant,  aggrandizes  itself,  encroaches  upon  its  fellow- 
faculties,  until,  at  last,  obtaining  the  mastery,  it  subverts 
the  moral  order  of  the  soul,  and  wages  its  parricidal  war 
against  the  sovereignty  of  conscience  within,  and  the  laws 
of  society  and  Heaven  without.  And  how  unspeakably 
dreadful  are  the  retributions  which  come  in  the  train  of 
these  remorseless  usurpers,  when  they  obtain  dominion 
over  the  soul !  Take,  for  instance,  the  earliest-developed, 
the  most  purely  selfish  and  animal  appetite  that  belongs 
to  us,  —  that  for  nourishing  beverage.  It  is  the  first  which 
demands  gratification  after  birth.  Subjected  to  the  laws 
of  temperance,  it  will  retain  its  zest,  fresh  and  genial,  for 
threescore  years  and  ten,  and  it  aifords  the  last  corporal 
solace  -upon  earth  to  the  parched  lips  of  the  dying  man. 
Yet,  if  the  possessor  of  this  same  pleasure-giving  appetite 
shall  be  incited,  either  by  examples  of  inordinate  indul- 
gence, or  by  festive  songs  in  praise  of  the  vine  and  the 
wine-cup,  to  inflame  it,  and  to  feed  its  deceitful  fires, 
though  but  for  the  space  of  a  few  short  years,  then  the 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  115 

spell  of  the  sorcerer  will  be  upon  him ;  and,  day  by  day, 
he  will  go  and  cast  himself  into  the  fiery  furnace  which 
he  has  kindled ;  —  nor  himself,  the  pitiable  victim,  alone, 
but  he  will  seize  upon  parents  and  wife  and  his  group  of 
innocent  children,  and  plunge  with  them  all  into  the 
seething  hell  of  intemperance. 

So  there  is,  in  human  nature,  an  innate  desire  of 
acquiring  property,  —  of  owning  something,  —  of  using 
the  possessives  my  and  mine.  Within  proper  limits,  this 
instinct  is  laudably  indulged.  Its  success  affords  a  pleas- 
ure in  which  reason  can  take  a  part.  It  stimulates  and 
strengthens  many  other  faculties.  It  makes  us  thought- 
ful and  forethoughtful.  It  is  the  parent  of  industry  and 
frugality,  —  and  industry  and  frugality,  as  we  all  know, 
are  blood-relations  to  the  whole  family  of  the  virtues. 
But  to  the  eye  and  heart  of  one  in  whom  this  love  of  ac- 
quisition has  become  absorbing  and  insane,  all  the  diver- 
sified substances  in  creation  are  reduced  to  two  classes,  — 
that  which  is  gold,  and  that  which  is  not;  —  and  all  the 
works  of  Nature  are  valued  or  despised,  and  the  laws  and 
institutions  of  society  upheld  or  assailed,  as  they  are  sup- 
posed to  be  favorable  or  unfavorable  to  the  acquisition  of 
wealth.  Whether  at  home  or  abroad,  in  the  festive  circle 
or  in  the  funeral  train  ;  whether  in  hearing  the  fervid  and 
thrilling  appeals  of  the  sanctuary,  or  the  pathos  of  civic 
eloquence,  one  idea  alone,  —  that  of  money,  money, 
money,  —  holds  possession  of  the  miser's  soul ;  its  voice 
rings  forever  in  his  ear ;  and  were  he  in  the  garden  of 
Eden,  —  its  beauty,  and  music,  and  perfume  suffusing  all 
his  senses,  —  his  only  thought  would  be,  how  much  money 
it  would  bring !  Such  mischief  comes  from  giving  suprem- 
acy to  a  subordinate,  though  an  essential  and  highly 
useful  faculty.  This  mischief,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent, 
parents  and  teachers  produce,  when,  through  an  ignorance 


116  SPECIAL    PEEPARATION 

of  the  natural  and  appropriate  methods  of  inducing  chil- 
dren to  study,  they  hire  them  to  learn  by  the  offer  of 
pecuniary  rewards. 

So,  too,  we  all  have  an  innate  love  for  whatever  is  beau- 
tiful;—  a  sentiment  that  yearns  for  higher  and  higher 
degrees  of  perfection  in  the  arts,  and  in  the  embellish- 
ments of  life,  —  a  feeling  which  would  prompt  us  to  "  gild 
refined  gold,  to  paint  the  lily,  to  throw  a  porfume  on  the 
violet,  and  add  another  hue  unto  the  rainbow."  Portions 
of  the  external  world  have  been  exquisitely  adapted  to 
this  inborn  love  of  the  beautiful,  by  Him  who  has  so 
clothed  the  lilies  of  the  field  that  they  outshine  Solomon 
in  all  his  glory.  Tin's  sentiment  may  be  too  much  or  too 
little  cultivated;  — so  little  as  to  make  us  disdain  gratifi- 
cations that  are  at  once  innocent  and  pure ;  or  sojnuch 
as  to  over-refine  us  into  a  hateful  fastidiousness.  In  the 
works  of  nature,  beauty  is  generally,  if  not  always,  subor- 
dinated to  utility.  In  cases  of  incompatibility,  graceful- 
ness yields  to  strength,  not  strength  to  gracefulness.  How 
would  the  rising  sun  mock  us  with  his  splendor,  if  he 
brought  no  life  or  warmth  in  his  beams  !  The  expectation 
of  autumnal  harvests  enhances  the  beauty  of  vernal  bloom. 
These  manifestations  of  nature  admonish  us  respecting  the 
rank  which  ornament  or  accomplishment  should  hold  in 
the  character  and  in  the  works  of  men ;  and,  of  course, 
in  the  education  of  children.  Christ  referred  occasionally 
to  the  beauties  and  charms  of  nature,  but  dwelt  perpetually 
upon  the  obligations  of  duty  and  charity.  But  what  oppo- 
site and  grievous  offences  are  committed  on  this  subject 
by  different  portions  of  society!  The  laboring  classes,  by 
reason  of  early  parental  neglect  in  cultivating  a  love  for 
the  beautiful,  often  forego  pleasures  which  a  bountiful 
Providence  scatters  profusely  and  gratuitously  around 
them,  and  strews  beneath  their  feet ;  while  there  is  a  class 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  117 

of  persons  at  the  other  extremity  of  the  social  scale,  who, 
from  never  comprehending  the  immeasurable  value  of  the 
objects  for  which  they  were  created,  and  the  vast  benefi- 
cence of  which,  from  their  wealth  and  station,  they  are 
capable,  actually  try  every  thing,  however  intrinsically 
noble  or  vsacrod,  by  some  conventional  law  of  fashion,  by 
some  arbitrary  and  capricious  standard  of  elegance.  In 
European  society,  this  class  of  "  fashionables  "  is  numer- 
ous. They  have  their  imitators  here,  —  beings,  who  are 
not  men  and  women,  but  similitudes  only,  —  who  occupy 
the  vanishing  point  in  the  perspective  of  society,  where 
all  that  is  true,  or  noble,  or  estimable  in  human  nature, 
fades  away  into  nothing.  With  this  class,  it  is  no  matter 
what  a  man  does  with  the  "  Ten  Commandments,"  pro- 
vided he  keeps  those  of  Lord  Chesterfield ;  and,  in  their 
society,  Beau  Brummell  would  take  precedence  of  Dr. 
Franklin. 

In  a  Report  lately  made  by  the  Agricultural  Commis- 
sioner for  the  survey  of  this  Commonwealth,  I  noticed  a 
statement  respecting  some  farmers  in  the  northern  part 
of  the  County  of  Essex,  who  attempted  to  raise  sun-flow- 
ers for  the  purpose  of  extracting  oil  from  the  seeds. 
Twenty  bushels  to  the  acre  was  the  largest  crop  raised  by 
any  one.  Six  bushels  of  the  seed  yielded  but  one  gallon 
of  oil,  worth,  in  the  market,  one  dollar  and  seventeen 
cents  only.  It  surely  required  no  great  boldness  to  assert 
that  the  experiment  did  not  succeed:  — cultivation,  one 
acre  ;  product,  three  gallons  of  oil  ;  value,  three  dollars 
and  fifty  cents  !  —  which  would,  perhaps,  about  half  repay 
the  cost  of  labor.  Woe  to  the  farmer  who  seeks  for  inde- 
pendence by  raising  sun-flowers  !  Ten  times  woe  to  the 
parents  who  rear  up  sun-flower  sons  or  sun-flower  daugh- 
ters,—  instead  of  sons  whose  hearts  glow  and  burn  with 
an  immortal  zeal  to  run  the  noble  career  of  usefulness 


118  SPECIAL    PREPARATION 

and  virtue  which  a  happy  fortune  has  laid  open  before 
them ;  —  instead  of  daughters  who  cherish  such  high  re- 
solves of  duty  as  lift  them  even  above  an  enthusiasm  for 
greatness,  into  those  loftier  and  serene  regions  where 
greatness  comes  not  from  excitement,  but  is  native,  and 
ever-springing  and  ever-abiding.  Every  son,  whatever 
may  be  his  expectations  as  to  fortune,  ought  to  be  so 
educated  that  he  can  superintend  some  part  of  the  com- 
plicated machinery  of  social  life ;  and  every  daughter 
ought  to  be  so  educated  that  she  can  answer  the  claims 
of  humanity,  whether  those  claims  require  the  labor  of 
the  head  or  the  labor  of  the  hand.  Every  daughter  ought 
to  be  so  trained  that  she  can  bear,  with  dignity  and  self- 
sustaining  ability,  those  revolutions  in  Fortune's  wheel, 
which  sometimes  bring  the  kitchen  up  and  turn  the  parlor 
down. 

Again  :  we  have  a  natural,  spontaneous  feeling  of  self- 
respect,  an  innate  sense  that,  simply  in  our  cajiaeiiy  as 
human  beings,  we  are  worth  something,  and  entitled  to 
some  consideration.  This  principle  constitutes  the  inte- 
rior frame-work  of  some  of  the  virtues,  veiled,  indeed,  by 
their  own  beautiful  covering,  but  still  necessary  in  order 
to  keep  them  in  an  erect  posture,  amidst  all  the  over- 
bearing currents  and  forces  of  the  world.  Where  this 
feeling  of  self-respect  exists  too  weakly,  the  whole  charac- 
ter becomes  limber,  flaccid,  impotent,  sinks  under  the 
menace  of  opposition,  and  can  be  frightened  out  of  any 
thing  or  into  any  thing.  On  the  other  hand,  when  this 
propensity  aggrandizes  itself,  and  becomes  swollen  and 
deformed  with  pride,  and  conceit,  and  intolerance,  it  is  a 
far  more  offensive  nuisance  than  many  of  those  which  the 
law  authorizes  us  to  abate,  summarily,  by  force  and 
arms.  Our  political  institutions  are  a  rich  alluvium  for 
the  growth  of  self-esteem  ;  for,  while  everybody  knows 


A    PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  119 

that  there  are  the  greatest  differences  between  men  in 
point  of  honesty,  of  ability,  of  will  to  do  good  and  to  pro- 
mote right,  yet  our  fundamental  laws,  —  and  rightly  too, 
—  ordain  a  political  equality.  But  what  is  not  right  is, 
that  the  political  equality  is  the  fact  mainly  regarded, 
while  there  is  a  tendency  to  disregard  the  intellectual  and 
moral  inequalities.  And  thus  a  faculty,  designed  to  sub- 
serve, and  capable  of  subserving  the  greatest  good,  engen- 
ders a  low  ambition,  and  fills  the  land  with  the  war-whoop 
of  party  strife. 

These  are  specimens  only  of  a  long  list  of  original  ten- 
dencies or  attributes  of  the  human  mind,  from  a  more 
full  enumeration  and  exposition  of  which,  I  must,  on  this 
occasion,  refrain.  But  have  not  enough  been  referred  to, 
to  authorize  us  to  assert  the  general  doctrine,  that  every 
teacher  ought  to  have  some  notions,  clear,  definit^  yyd- 
comprehensive,  of  the  manifold  powegs,T— the  varioujfpp^ 
tare,  —  of  the  beings  confided  to  his  hands,  so  that  he 
may  repress  the  redundancy  of  a  too  luxuriant  growth, 
and  nourish  the  feeble  with  his  fostering:  care  ?  No  idea 
can  be  more  erroneous  than  that  children  po  to  school  to 
lea  ni  ilic  rudiments  of  knowledge,  only,  and  not  to  form 
.••liaracier.  The  character  of  children  is  always  forming. 
No  place,  no  companion,  is  without  an  influence  upon  it ; 
and  at  school  it  is  formed  more  rapidly  than  anywhere 
else.  The  mere  fact  of  the  presence  of  so  many  children 
together,  puts  the  social  or  dissocial  nature  of  each  into 
fervid  action.  To  be  sent  to  school,  especially  in  the  coun- 
try, is  often  as  great  an  event  in  a  child's  life,  as  it  is,  in 
his  father's,  to  be  sent  to  the  General  Court ;  and  we  all 
know  with  what  unwonted  force  all  things  affect  the 
mind,  in  new  places  and  under  new  circumstances. 
Every  child,  too,  when  he  first  goes  to  school,  under- 
stands that  he  is  put  upon  his  good  behavior  ;  and,  with 


120  SPECIAL   PREPARATION 

man  or  child,  it  is  a  very  decisive  thing,  and  reaches  deep 
into  character  and  far  into  futurity,  when  put  upon  his 
good  behavior,  to  prove  recreant.  Now,  teachers  take 
children  under  their  care,  as  it  were,  during  the  firxf 
irarm  days  of  the  spring  of  life,  when  more  can  be  done 
towards  directing  their  growth  and  modifying  their  dis- 
positions, than  can  be  done  in  years,  at  a  later  season  of 
their  existence. 

Equally  indispensable  is  it,  that  every  teacher  should 
know  by  what  means,  —  by  virtue  of  what  natural  laws, 
—  the  human  powers  and  faculties  are  strengthened  or 
enfeebled.  There  is  a  principle  running  through,  every 
mental  operation,  —  without  a  knowledge  of  which, 
without  a  knowledge  how  to  apply  which,  the  life  of  the 
most  faithful  teacher  will  be  only  a  succession  of  well- 
intentioned  errors.  The  growth  or  decline  of  all  our 
powers  depends  upon  a  steadfast  law.  There  is  no  more 
chance  in  the  processes  of  their  growth  or  decay  than 
there  is  in  the  Multiplication  Table.  They  grow  by  exer- 
cise, and  they  lose  tone  and  vigor  by  inaction.  All  the 
faculties  have  their  related  objects,  and  they  grow  by- 
being  excited  to  action  through  the  stimulus  or  instru- 
mentality of  those  objects.  Each  faculty,  too,  has  its 
own  set  or  class  of  related  objects  ;  and  the  classes  of  re- 
lated objects  differ  as  much  from  each  other,  as  do  the 

corresponding  faculties  which  they  naturally  excite. If 

any  one  power  or  faculty,  therefore,  is  to  be  strengthened, 
s-o  as  to  perform  its  office  with  facility,  precision  and  de- 
spatch, that  identical  faculty,  —  not  any  other  one,  — _mu  jt 
be  exercised,  (jt  does  not  strengthen  my  left  arm  to  exer- 
cise my  right ;)  and  this  is  just  as  true  of  the  powers  of 
the  mind,  as  of  the  organs  of  the  body.  The  whole  pith 
of  that  saying  of  Solomon,  "Train  up  a  child  in  the  way 
he  should  go,"  consists  in  this  principle,  because  i(i  te 


A    PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  121 


. 

train  "  moans  to  drill,  to  repeat,  to  do  the  same  thing 
ovpr_nnrL  QVP.P  a  orpin  7  —  t.TmA  -  ia^  f.n  exercise.  Solomon 
does  not  say,  "  Tell  a  child  the  way  he  should  go,  and 
when  he  is  old,  he  will  not  depart  from  it."  Had  he  said 
this,  we  could  refute  him  daily  by  ten  thousand  facts. 
Unfortunately,  education  amongst  us,  at  present,  consists 
too  much  in  telling,  not  in  training,  on  the  part  of  par- 
ents and  teachers  ;  and,  of  course,  in  hearing,  not  in 
doing,  on  the  part  of  children  and  pupils.  The  black- 
smith's right  arm,  the  philosopher's  intellect,  the  philan- 
thropist's benevolence,  all  grow  and  strengthen  accord- 
ing to  this  law  of  exercise.  The  farmer  works  solid 
flesh  upon  his  cattle  ;  the  pugilist  strikes  vigor  into  his 
arms  and  breast  ;  the  foot  soldier  marches  strength  into 
his  limbs  ;  the  practical  man  thinks  quickness  and  judg- 
ment into  his  mind  ;  and  the  true  Christian  lives  his 
prayers  of  love  and  his  thoughts  of  mercy,  until  every 
man  becomes  his  brother.  Our  own  experience  and  ob- 
servation furnish  us  with  a  life-full  of  evidence  attesting 
this  principle.  How  did  our  feet  learn  to  walk,  our  fin- 
gers to  write,  our  organs  of  speech  to  utter  an  innumera- 
ble variety  of  sounds  ?  By  what  means  does  the  musi- 
cian pass  from  coarse  discords  to  perfect  music,  —  from 
hobbling  and  shambling  in  his  measure,  to  keeping  time 
like  a  chronometer,  —  from  a  slow  and  timid  touch  of 
keys  or  chords,  to  such  celerity  of  movement,  that, 
though  his  will  sends  out  a  thousand  commands  in  a 
minute,  his  nimble  fingers  obey  them  all  ?  It  is  this  exer- 
cise, this  repetition,  which  gives  to  jugglers  their  marvel- 
lous dexterity.  By  dint  of  practice,  their  motions  be- 
come quicker  than  our  eyesight,  and  thus  elude  inspection. 
A  knowledge  of  this  principle  solves  many  of  the  riddles 
of  life,  by  showing  us  whence  comes  the  domineering 
strength  of  human  appetites  and  passions.  It  comes 


122  SPECIAL   PREPARATION 

from  exercise,  —  from  a  long  indulgence  of  them  in 
thought  and  act,  —  until  the  offspring  of  sinful  desire 
turn  back,  and  feast  upon  the  vitals  of  the  wretch  who 
nurtured  them.  It  is  this  which  makes  the  miser  pant 
and  raven  for  gain,  more  and  more,  just  in  proportion  to 
the  shortness  of  the  life  during  which  he  can  enjoy  it. 
It  is  this  which  sends  the  drunkard  to  pay  daily  tribute 
to  his  own  executioner.  It  is  this  which  scourges  back 
the  gambler  to  the  hell  he  dreads. 

It  is  by  this  law  of  exercise  that  the  perceptive  and  re- 
flective intellect, — I  mean  the  powers  of  observing  and 
judging,  —  are  strengthened.  If,  therefore,  in  the  edu- 
cation of  the  child,  the  action  of  these  powers  is  early 
arrested  ;  if  his  whole  time  is  engrossed  and  his  whole 
energy  drawn  away,  by  other  things  ;  or,  if  he  is  not  sup- 
plied with  the  proper  objects  or  apparatus  on  which  these 
faculties  can  exert  themselves,  —  then  the  after-life  of 
such  a  child  will  be  crowded  with  practical  errors  and 
misjudgments.  As  a  man,  his  impressions  of  things  will 
be  faint  and  fleeting ;  he  will  never  be  able  to  describe 
an  object  as  he  saw  it,  nor  to  tell  a  story  as  he  heard  it. 
No  handicrafts-man  or  mechanic  ever  becomes  what  we 
call  a  first-rate  workman,  until  after  innumerable  experi- 
ments and  judgments,  —  that  is,  repetitions,  or  exercises. 
And  the  rule  is  the  same  even  with  genius,  —  artisan  or 
artist,  he  must  practise  long  and  sedulously  upon  lines, 
proportions,  reliefs,  before  he  can  become  the  first  sculp- 
tor of  the  age,  or  the  first  boot-maker  in  the  city.  The 
teacher,  then,  must  continue  to  exercise  the  powers  of 
his  pupils,  until  he  secures  accuracy  even  in  the  minut- 
est things  he  teaches.  Every  child  can  and  should  learn 
to  judge,  almost  with  mathematical  exactness,  how  long 
an  inch  is  ;  —  no  matter  if  he  does  not  guess  within  a 
foot  of  it  the  first  time.  Whether  the  story  of  Casper 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO    TEACHING.  123 

Hauser  be  true  or  not,  it  has  verisimilitude,  and  is  there- 
fore instructive.  It  warns  us  what  the  general  result 
must  be,  if,  by  a  non-presentation  of  their  related  objects, 
the  -faculties  of  a  child  are  not  brought  into  exercise. 
We  meet  with  persons,  every  day,  who,  in  regard  to  some 
one  or  more  of  the  faculties,  are  Casper  Hausers.  This 
happens,  almost  universally,  not  through  any  natural  de- 
fect, but  because  parents  and  teachers  have  been  igno- 
rant, either  of  the  powers  to  be  exercised,  or  of  the 
related  objects  through  whose  instrumentality  they  can 
be  excited  to  action. 

But  here  arises  a  demand  for  great  skill,  aptitude  and 
resources,  on  the  part  of  the  teacher ;  for,  by  continuing 
to  exercise  the  same  faculty,  I  do  not  mean  a  monoto- 
nous repetition  of  the  same  action,  nor  a  perpetual  pres- 
entation of  the  same  object  or '  idea.  Such  a  course 
would  soon  cloy  and  disgust,  and  thus  terminate  all  effort 
in  that  direction.  Would  a  child  ever  learn  to  dance,  if 
there  were  but  one  figure  ;  or  to  sing,  it  there  were  but 
one  tune  ?  Nature,  science,  art,  offer  a  boundless  variety 
of  objects  and  processes,  adapted  to  quicken  and  employ 
each  of  the  faculties.  These  resources  the  teacher 
should  have  at  his  command,  and  should  make  use  of 
them,  in  the  order,  and  for  the  period,  that  each  particu- 
lar case  may  require.  ^Look  into  the  shops  of  our  inge- 
nious artisans  and  mechanics,  and  see  their  shining  rows 
of  tools,  —  hundreds  in  number,  —  but  each  adapted  to 
some  particular  process  in  their  curious  art.)  Look  into 
the  shop  or  hut  of  a  savage,  an  Indian  mechanic,  and 
you  will  find  his  chest  of  tools  composed  of  a  single  jack- 
knife  !  So  with  our  teachers.  Sonae  of  them  have  ap- 
paratus, diagram,  chart,  model ;  they  have  anecdote, 
epigram,  narrative,  history,  by  which  to  illustrate  every 
branch  of  study,  and  to  fit  every  variety  of  disposition  ; 


124  SPECIAL    PREPARATION 

while  the  main  resource  of  others,  for  all  studies,  for  all 
ages  and  for  all  dispositions,  is  —  the  rod  ! 

Again ;  a  child  must  not  only  be  exercised  into  correct- 
ness of  observation,  comparison  and  judgment,  but  into 
accuracy  in  the  narration  or  description  of  what  he  has 
seen,  heard,  thought  or  felt,  so  that,  whatever  thoughts, 
emotions,  memories,  are  within  him,  he  can  present  them 
all  to  others  in  exact  and  luminous  words.  Dr.  Johnson 
said,  "Accustom  your  children  constantly  to  this  ;  if  a 
thing  happened  at  one  window,  and  they,  when  relating 
it,  say  that  it  happened  at  another,  do  not  let  it  pass,  but 
instantly  check  them.  You  do  not  know  where  deviation 
from  the  truth  will  end."  Every  man  who  sees  effects  in 
causes,  will  fully  concur  with  the  Doctor  in  regard  to  the 
value  of  such  a  habit  of  accuracy  as  is  here  implied.  If. 
in  the  narration  of  an  event,  or  in  the  recitation  of  a 
lesson,  a  child  is  permitted  to  begin  at  the  last  end  of  it, 
and  to  scatter  the  middle  about  promiscuously,  depend 
upon  it,  if  that  child,  after  growing  up,  is  called  into 
court  as  a  witness,  somebody  will  suffer  in  fortune,  in 
reputation,  or  perhaps  in  life.  When  practising  at  the 
bar,  I  was  once  engaged  in  an  important  case  of  slan- 
der, where  the  whole  question  of  the  innocence  or 
guilt  of  the  defendant  turned  upon  the  point,  whether, 
at  a  certain  time,  he  was  seen  out  of  one  window,  or 
out  of  another  ;  and  the  stupid  witness  first  swore 
that  is  was  one  window,  then  another  window,  and 
at  last,  thought  it  might  be  a  door  ;  and  doubtless, 
he  could  have  been  made  to  swear  that  he  saw  him 
through  the  sky-light.  Would  you  appreciate  the  im- 
portance of  accuracy,  in  observation  and  statement, 
take  one  of  those  cases  which  so  frequently  occur  in  our 
courts  of  law,  where  a  dozen  witnesses,  —  all  honest, — 
swear  one  way,  and  another  dozen,  —  equally  honest,  — . 


A    PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  125 

counter-swear  ;  and  contrast  it  with  a  case,  which  so  rare- 
ly occurs,  where  a  witness,  whose  mind,  like  a  copying 
machine,  having  taken  an  exact  impression  of  whatever 
it  has  seen  or  heard,  attests  to  complicated  facts,  in  a 
manner  so  orderly,  luminous,  natural,  —  giving  to  each, 
time,  locality,  proportion,  that  when  he  has  finished, 
every  auditor,  —  bench,  bar,  spectators, — all  feel  as 
though  they  had  been  personally  present  and  witnessed 
the  whole  transaction.  Now,  although  something  of  this 
depends,  unquestionably,  upon  soundness  in  physical  and 
mental  organization,  yet  a  vast  portion  of  it  is  referable 
to  the  early  observation  or  neglect,  on  the  part  of  teacher 
or  parent,  of  the  law  we  are  considering. 

There  is  another  point,  too,  which  the  teacher  should 
regard,  especially  where  only  a  small  portion  of  non-age 
is  appropriated  to  school  attendance.  In  exercising  the 
faculties  for  the  purpose  of  strengthening  them,  the 
greatest  amount  of  useful  knowledge  should  be  commu- 
nicated. The  faculties  may  be  exercised  and  strength- 
ened in  acquiring  useful  or  useless  knowledge.  A  farmer 
or  a  stone-mason  may  exercise  and  strengthen  the  mus- 
cles of  his  body,  by  pitching  or  rolling  timbers  or  stones, 
backwards  and  forwards ;  but.  by  converting  the  same 
materials  into  a  house  or  a  fence,  he  may  at  once  gain 
strength  and  do  good.  Every  teacher,  at  the  same  time 
that  he  exercises  the  faculties  of  his  pupils,  ought  to  im- 
part the  greatest  amount  of  valuable  knowledge  ;  and  he, 
.-Tiould  always  be  above  the  temptation  of  keeping  a  pu- 
pil in  a  lower  department,  of  study,  because  he  himself 
•  Iocs  not  understand  the  higher  ;  or,  on  the  other  hand, 
of  prematurely  carrying  his  pupil  into  a  higher  depart- 
ment, because  of  his  own  ignorance  of  the  lower)  Sup- 
pose a  bright  boy,  for  instance,  to  be  studying  arithmetic 
and  geography,  at  school.  Now,  arithmetic  cannot  be 


126  SPECIAL    PREPARATION 

taught  unless  it  is  understood  ;  but.  with  the  help  of  an 
atlas,  and  a  text-book  whose  margin  is  all  covered  with 
questions,  the  business  of  teaching  geography  may  be  set 
up  on  a  very  slender  capital  of  knowledge.  And  here  a 
teacher  who  is  obliged  to  be  very  economical  of  his  arith- 
metic, would  be  tempted  to  keep  his  pupil  upon  all  the 
small  towns,  and  tiny  rivers,  and  dots  of  islands  in  the 
geography,  in  order  to  delay  him,  and  gain  time,  —  like 
the  officers  of  those  banks  whose  specie  runs  low,  who 
seek  to  pay  off  their  creditors  in  cents,  because  it  takes 
so  long  to  count  the  copper.  Every  teacher  ought  to 
know  vastly  more  than  he  is  required  to  teach,  so  that  he 
may  be  furnished,  on  every  subject,  with  copious  illustra- 
tion and  instructive  anecdote ;  and  so  that  the  pupils  may 
be  disabused  of  the  notion  they  are  so  apt  to  acquire, 
that  they  carry  all  knowledge  in  their  satchels.  Eveiy 
teacher  should  be  possessed  of  a  facility  at  explanation, 
—  a  tact  in  discerning  and  solving  difficulties,  —  not  to 
be  used  too  often,  for  then  it  would  supersede  the  effort  it 
should  encourage,  — but  when  it  is  used,  to  be  quick  and 
sure  as  a  telescope,  bringing  distant  objects  near,  and 
making  obscure  ones  distinct.  In  the  important,  but 
grossly  neglected  and  abused  exercise  of  reading,  for  in- 
stance, every  new  fact,  every  new  idea,  is  news  to  the 
child  ;  and  did  he  fully  understand  it,  he  would  be  as 
eager  to  learn  it,  as  we  are  to  learn  what  is  news  to  us. 
But  how.  think  you,  should  we  be  vexed,  if  our  news- 
bringer  spoke  every  third  word  in  a  foreign  language  ;  or 
gave  us  only  a  Pennsylvania  newspaper  printed  in  Ger- 
man, when  we  wanted  to  know  how  their  votes  stood  in 
an  election  for  President.  Whatever  words  a  child  does 
not  understand,  in  his  reading  lesson,  are,  to  him,  words 
in  a  foreign  language  ;  and  they  must  be  translated  into 
his  own  language  before  he  can  take  any  interest  in  them. 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  127 

But  if,  instead  of  being  translated  into  his  language,  they 
are  left  unnoticed,  or  are  translated  into  another  foreign 
language  still,  —  that  is,  into  other  words  or  phrases  of 
which  he  is  ignorant,  —  then,  the  child,  instead  of  de- 
lightful and  instructive  ideas,  gets  empty  words,  mere 
sounds,  atmospheric  vibrations  only.  In  Dr.  Johnson's 
Dictionary,  the  word,  "Network"  is  denned  to  be  "  any 
thing  reticulated  or  decussated,  with  interstices  between 
the  intersections."  Now  who,  ignorant  of  the  meaning 
of  the  word  "  network,"  before,  would  understand  it  any 
better  by  being  told,  that  it  is  "  any  thing  reticulated  or 
decussated,  with  interstices  between  the  intersections  ?  " 
Nor  would  he  be  much  enlightened,  if,  on  looking  far- 
ther, he  found  that  the  same  author  had  given  the  follow- 
ing definitions  of  the  defining  words  : — "reticulated," 
"formed  with  interstitial  vacuities ;  " —  "  decussated," 
"  intersected  at  acute  angles ;  "  —  "  interstice,"  "  space 
between  one  thing  and  another;"  —  "intersection," 
"  point  ivhere  lines  cross  each  other.""  If  this  is  not,  as 
Milton  says,  "  dark  with  excess  of  bright,"  it  is,  at  least, 
"  darkness  visible."  A  few  years  since,  a  geography  was 
published  in  this  State,  —  the  preface  of  which  boasted 
of  its  adaptation  to  the  capacities  of  children  ;  — and,  on 
the  second  page,  there  was  this  definition  of  the  words 
"  zenith  and  nadir :  "  ;i  zenith  and  nadir,  two  Arabic 
words  importing' their  own  signification."  A  few  years 
since,  an  English  traveller  and  book-maker,  who  called 
himself  Thomas  Ashe,  Esq.,  visited  the  Big  Bone  Licks, 
in  Kentucky,  where  he  found  the  remains  of  the  mam- 
moth, in  great  abundance,  and  whence  he  carried  away 
several  wagon-loads  of  bones.  In  describing  the  size  of 
one  of  the  shoulder-blades  of  that  animal,  he  says,  it 
"  was  about  as  large  as  a  breakfast-table  !  "  A  child's 
mind  may  be  dark  and  ignorant  before,  but,  under  such 


128  SPECIAL    PREPARATION 

explanations  as  these,  darkness  will  coagulate,  and  igno- 
rance be  sealed  in  hermetically.  Let  a  school  be  so  con- 
ducted but  for  one  season,  and  all  life  will  be  abstracted 
from  it ;  and  it  will  become  the  painful  duty  of  the  school 
committee,  at  its  close,  to  attend  a  post  mortem  examina- 
tion of  the  children,  without  even  the  melancholy  sat- 
isfaction of  believing  that  science  will  be  benefited  by  the 
horrors  of  the  dissection. 

f  Every  teacher  should  be  competent  to  some  care  of  the 
Jhoalth  of  his  pupils,  —  not  merely  for  the  purpose  of  rcg- 
ynifttUig  the  temperature  of  the  schoolroom,  and,  of 
/course,  the  transition  which  the  scholars  must  undergo, 
if  on  entering  or  leaving  it,  —  though  this  is  of  no  small 
importance,  —  but  so  that,  as  occasion  offers,  he  may  in- 
culcate a  knowledge  of  some  of  the  leading  conditions 
jipon  which  health  and  life  depend.  I  saw,  last  year,  in 
the  public  town  school  of  Northampton,  —  under  the  care 
of  Mr.  R.  M.  Hubbard, — more  than  a  hundred  boys, 
from  ten  or  eleven  to  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  of  age,  who 
pointed  out  the  place  and  gave  the  name  of  all  the  prin- 
cipal bones  in  their  bodies,  as  well  as  an  anatomist  would 
have  done  ;  who  explained  the  physiological  processes  of 
the  circulation  of  the  blood  and  the  alimentation  of  food, 
and  described  the  putrefactive  action  of  ardent  spirits 
upon  the  delicate  tissues  of  the  stomach.  Now  such 
boys  have  a  chance,  nay,  a  certainty,  of  far  longer  life 
and  far  better  health,  than  they  would  otherwise  have  ; 
and  as  they  grow  up,  they  will  be  far  less  easily  tempted 
to  emulate  either  of  the  three  cockney  graces,  —  Gin, 
Swearing  and  Tobacco. 

But  1  must  pass  by  other  considerations,  respecting  the 
growth  and  invigoration  of  the  intellectual  faculties,  and 
the  classes  of  subjects  upon  which  they  should  be  em- 
ployed. I  hasten  to  the  consideration  of  another  topic, 
incalculably  more  important. 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  129 

The  moral  faculties  increase  or  decline,  strengthen  or 
languish,  by  the  same  law  of  exercise.  In  legislating  for 
"loenTacgg^rare  mainly  regarded ;  but  in  the  education 
of  children,  motives  are  every  thing >  MOTIVES  ARE  EVERY 
THING!  All,  this  side  of  the  motive,  is  mere  mechanism, 
anxTTt  matters  not  whether  it  be  done  by  the  hand,  or  by 
a  crank.  There  was  profound  philosophy  in  the  old  theo- 
logical notion,  that  whoever  made  a  league  with  the 
devil,  in  order  to  gratify  a  passion  through  his  help,  be- 
came the  devil's  property  afterwards.  And  so,  when  a 
teacher  stimulates  a  child  to  the  performance  of  actions, 
externally  right,  by  appealing  to  motives  intrinsically 
wrong,  he  sells-  that  child  into  bondage  to  the  wrong 
motive.  Some  parents,  finding  a  desire  of  luxurious  food 
a  stronger  motive-power  in  their  children  than  any  other, 
accomplish  every  thing  through  its  means.  They  hire 
them  to  go  to  school  and  learn,  to  go  to  church  and  re- 
member the  text,  and  to  behave  well  before  company,  by 
a  promise  of  dainties.  Every  repetition  of  this  enfeebles 
the  sentiment  of  duty,  through  its  inaction,  while  it  in- 
creases the  desire  for  delicacies,  by  its  exercise  ;  and  as. 
they  successively  come  into  competition  afterwards,  the 
virtue  will  be  found  to  have  become  weaker,  and  the  ap- 
petite stronger.  Such  parents  touch  the  wrong  pair  of 
nerves,  —  the  sensual  instead  of  the  moral,  the  bestial 
instead  of  the  divine.  These  springs  of  action  lie  at  the 
very  extremes  of  human  nature,  —  one  class  down  among 
the  brutes,  the  other  up  among  the  seraphim.  When  a 
child,  so  educated,  becomes  a  man,  and  circumstances 
make  him  the  trustee  or  fiduciary  of  the  friendless  and 
unprotected,  and  he  robs  the  widow  and  orphan  to  obtain 
the  means  of  luxury  or  voluptuousness,  we  exclaim, 
"  Poor  human  nature  I  "  and  are  ready  to  appoint  a  Fast; 
when  the  truth  is,  he  was  educated  to  be  a  knave  under 


130  SPECIAL   PREPARATION 

that  very  temptation.  Were  a  surgeon  to  operate  upon 
a  human  body,  with  as  little  knowledge  of  his  subject  as 
this,  and  whip  round  his  double-edged  knife  where  the 
vital  parts  lie  thickest,  he  would  be  tried  for  manslaugh- 
ter at  the  next  court,  and  deserve  conviction. 

Take  another  example  ;  —  and  I  instance  one  of  the 
motive-forces  which,  for  the  last  fifty  or  a  hundred  years, 
has  been  mainly  relied  on,  in  our  schools,  academies  and 
colleges,  as  the  stimulus  to  intellectual  effort ;  and 
which  has  done  more  than  every  thing  else,  to  cause 
the  madness  and  the  profligacy  of  those  political  and 
social  rivalries  that  now  convulse  the  land.  Let  us 
take  a  child  who  has  only  a  moderate>  love  of  learning, 
but  an  inordinate  passion  for  praise  and  place  ;  and  we 
therefore  allure  him  to  study  by  the  enticements  of  pre- 
cedence and  applause.  If  he  will  surpass  all  his  fellows, 
we  advance  him  to  the  post,  and  signalize  him  with  the 
badges  of  distinction,  and  never  suffer  the  siren  of  flat- 
tery to  cease  the  enchantments  of  her  song.  If  he  ever 
has  any  compassionate  misgivings  in  regard  to  the 
effect  which  his  own  promotion  may  have  upon  his  less 
brilliant,  though  not  less  meritorious  fellow-pupils,  then 
we  seek  to  withdraw  his  thoughts  from  this  virtuous 
channel,  and  to  turn  them  to  the  selfish  contemplation  of 
his  own  brilliant  fortunes  in  future  years  ;  if  waking 
conscience  ever  whispers  in  his  ear,  that  that  pleasure  is 
dishonorable  which  gives  pain  to  the  innocent ;  then  we 
dazzle  him  with  the  gorgeous  vision  of  triumphal  honors 
and  applauding  multitudes  ;  —  and  when,  in  after-life, 
this  victim  of  false  influences  deserts  a  righteous  cause 
because  it  is  declining,  and  joins  an  unrighteous  one  be- 
cause it  is  prospering,  and  sets  his  name  in  history's  pil- 
lory, to  be  scoffed  and  jeered  at  for  ages,  then  we  pour 
out  lamentations,  in  prose  and  verse,  over  the  moral  sui- 


A   PREREQUISITE  TO   TEACHING.  131 

cide !  And  yet,  by  such  a  course  of  education,  he  was 
prepared  beforehand,  like  a  skilfully  organized  machine, 
to  prove  a  traitor  and  an  apostate  at  that  very  conjuncture. 
No  doubt,  a  college-boy  will  learn  more  Greek  and  Latin 
if  it  is  generally  understood  that  college-honors  are  to  be 
mainly  awarded  for  proficiency  in  those  languages  ;  but 
what  care  we  though  a  man  can  speak  seven  languages, 
or  dreams  in  Hebrew  or  Sanscrit,  because  of  their  fami- 
liarity, if  he  has  never  learned  the  language  of  sympathy 
for  human  suffering,  and  is  deaf  when  the  voice  of  truth 
and  duty  utters  their  holy  mandates  ?  We  want  men 
who  feel  a  sentiment,  a  consciousness,  of  brotherhood  for 
the  whole  human  race.  We  want  men  who  will  instruct 
the  ignorant,  —  not  delude  them ;  who  will  succor  'the 
weak,  —  not  prey  upon  them.  We  want  men  who  will 
fly  to  the  moral  breach  when  the  waters  of  desolation 
are  pouring  in,  and  who  will  stand  there,  and,  if  need 
be,  die  there,  —  applause  or  no  applause.  No  doubt, 
every  one  is  bound  to  take  watchful  care  of  that  portion 
of  his  happiness  which  rightfully  depends  upon  the  good 
opinion  of  others ;  but  before  any  teacher  attempts  to 
secure  the  proficiency  of  his  pupils  by  inflaming  their 
love  of  praise  and  place,  ought  he  not  to  appeal,  with 
earnest  and  prolonged  entreaty,  to  every  higher  senti- 
ment ;  and  even  then,  should  he  fail  of  arousing  a  desire 
for  improvement,  would  it  not  be  better  to  abandon  a 
pupil  to  mediocrity,  or  even  insignificance,  than  to  insure 
him  the  highest  eminence  by  awakening  an  unholy  ambi- 
tion in  his  bosom  ?  It  is  infinitely  better  for  any  nation 
to  support  a  hospital  for  fools,  than  to  have  a  parliament 
or  a  congress  of  knaves. 

And  thus  it  is  with  all  moral  developments.  Igno- 
rance may  appeal  to  a  wrong  motive,  and  thus  give  inor- 
dinate strength  to  an  inferior  sentiment,  while  honestly 


132  SPECIAL   PEEPAEATION 

iii  quest  of  a  right  action.  For  a  few  times,  perhaps 
even  for  a  few  years,  the  appeal  may  be  successful ;  but, 
by  and  by,  the  interior  sentiment  or  propensity  will  gain 
predominance,  and  usurp  the  throne,  and  rule  by  virtue 
of  its  own  might. 

So,  too,  a  train  of  circumstances  may  be  prepared,  or 
a  system  of  government  adopted,  designed  by  their 
author  for  good,  yet  productive  of  a  venomous  brood  of 
feelings.  .Suppose  a  teacher  attempts  to  secure  obedi- 
ence by  fear,  instead  of  love-,  but  still  lacks  the  energy  or 
the  talent  requisite  for  success.  Forthwith,  and  from  the 
necessity  of  the  case,  there  are  two  hostile  parties  in  that 
school,  —  the  teacher  with  his  government  to  maintain,  the 
pupils  with  their  various  and  ever-springing  desires  to 
gratify,  in  defiance  of  that  government.  Not  only  will 
there  be  revolts  and  mutinies,  revolutions  and  counter- 
revolutions, iu  sucli  a  school,  but,  what  is  infinitely  worse 
because  of  its  meanness  and  baseness,  there  will  be  gene- 
rated a  moral  pestilence  of  deception  and  trickery.  The 
boldest  spirits,  —  those  already  too  bold  and  fool-hardy, 
—  will  break  out  into  open  rebellion,  and  thus  begin  to 
qualify  themselves  to  become,  in  after-life,  violators  and 
contemners  of  the  laws  of  society  ;  while  those  who  are 
already  prone  to  concealment  and  perfidy  will  sharpen 
their  wits  for  deception  ;  they  will  pretend  to  be  saying 
or  doing  one  thing  when  saying  or  doing  another  ;  they 
will  sever  the  connection  between  tongue  and  heart ;  they 
will  make  the  eyes,  the  face,  and  all  the  organs  that  con- 
tribute to  the  natural  language,  belie  the  thoughts  ;  and, 
in  fine,  will  turn  the  whole  body  into  an  instrument  of 
dissimulation.  Such  children,  under  such  management, 
are  every  day  preparing  to  become,  —  not  men  of  frank- 
ness, of  ingenuousness,  of  a  beautiful  transparency  of 
disposition,  —  but  sappers  and  miners  of  character,  — 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO    TEACHING.  133 

men  accomplishing  all  their  ends  by  stratagem  and  am- 
bush, and  as  full  of  guile  as  the  first  serpent.  Who  of  us 
has  not  seen  some  individual  so  secretive  and  guileful  as 
to  be  impervious  to  second-sight,  or  even  to  the  boasted 
vision  of  animal  magnetism  ?  I  cannot  but  believe  that 
most  of  those  hateful  specimens  of  duplicity,  —  I  might 
rather  say,  of  triplicity,  or  multiplicity,  —  which  we 
sometimes  encounter  in  society,  had  their  origin  in  the 
attempts  made  in  early  life  to  evade  commands  injudi- 
ciously given,  or  not  enforced  when  given.  If  any  thing 
pertaining  to  the  education  of  children  demands  discre- 
tion, prudence,  wisdom,  it  is  the  commands  which  we  im- 
pose upon  them.  In  no  case  ought  a  command  ever  to 
be  issued  to  a  child  without  a  moral  certainty  either  that 
it  will  be  voluntarily  obeyed,  or,  if  resisted,  that  it  can 
be  enforced ;  because  disobedience  to  superiors,  who  stand 
at  first  in  the  place  of  a  child's  conscience,  prepares  the 
way  for  disobedience  to  conscience  itself,  when  that  fac- 
ulty is  developed.  Hence  the  necessity  of  discriminat- 
ing, as  a  preliminary,  between  what  a  child  will  do,  or 
can  be  made  to  do,  and  the  contrary.  Hence,  when  dis- 
obedience is  apprehended,  the  issue  should  be  tried  rather 
on  a  case  of  prohibition  than  of  injunction,  because  a 
child  can  be  deterred  when  he  cannot  be  compelled. 
Hence,  also,  the  necessity  of  discriminating  between  what 
a  child  has  the  moral  power  to  do,  and  what  it  is  in  vain 
to  expect  from  him.  Take  a  child  who  has  been  brought 
up  luxuriously,  indulgently,  selfishly,  and  command  him, 
in  the  first  instance,  to  incur  some  great  sacrifice  for  a 
mere  stranger,  or  for  some  object  which  he  neither  un- 
derstands nor  values,  and  disobedience  is  as  certain  as  long 
days  in  the  middle  of  June  ;  —  I  mean  the  disobedience 
of  the  spirit,  for  fear,  perhaps,  may  secure  the  perform- 
ance of  the  outward  act.  Such  a  child  knows  nothing  of 


134  SPECIAL   PKEPARATION 

the  impulsions  of  conscience,  of  the  joyful  emotions 
that  leap  up  in  the  heart  after  the  performance  of  a  gen- 
erous deed  ;  and  it  is  as  absurd  to  put  such  a  weight  of 
self-denial  upon  his  benevolence,  the  first  time,  as  it 
would  be  to  put  a  camel's  load  upon  his  shoulders.  Such 
a  child  is  deeply  diseased.  He  is  a  moral  paralytic.  In 
regard  to  all  benevolent  exertion  and  sacrifice,  he  is  as 
weak  as  an  infant ;  and  he  can  be  recovered  and  strength- 
ened to  virtuous  resolutions  only  by  degrees.  What 
should  we  think  of  a  physician,  who,  the  first  time  his 
patient  emerged  from  a  sick -chamber,  —  pallid,  emaci- 
ated, tottering,  —  should  prescribe  a  match  at  wrestling, 
or  the  running  of  races  ?  Yet  this  would  be  only  a  par- 
allel to  the  mode  in  which  selfish  or  vicious  children  are 
often  treated  ;  nay,  some  persons  prepare  or  select  the 
most  difficult  cases,  —  cases  requiring  great  generosity  or 
moral  intrepidity,  —  by  which  to  break  new  beginners 
into  the  work  of  benevolence  or  duty.  If,  by  a  bad  edu- 
cation, a  child  has  lost  all  generous  affections,  (for  no 
child  is.  born  without  them  ;)  if  he  never  shares  his  books 
or  divides  his  luxuries  with  his  playmates  ;  if  he  hides 
his  playthings  at  the  approach  of  his  little  visitors  ;  if  his 
eye  never  kindles  at  the  recital  of  a  magnanimous  deed, 
—  of  course  1  mean  one  the  magnanimity  of  which  he 
can  comprehend,  —  then  he  can  be  won  back  to  kindness 
and  justice  only  by  laborious  processes,  and  in  almost  im- 
perceptible degrees.  In  every  conversation  before  such 
children,  generosity  and  self-denial  should  be  spoken  of 
with  a  fervor  of  admiration  and  a  glow  of  sympathy. 
Stories  should  be  told  or  read  before  them,  in  which  the 
principal  actors  are  signalized  by  some  of  the  qualities 
they  delight  in,  (always  provided  that  no  element  of  evil 
mingles  with  them,)  and  when  their  attachments  are  firm- 
ly fastened  upon  hero  or  heroine,  then  the  social,  amia- 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  135 

• 

ble  and  elevated  sentiments  which  are  deficient  in  the 
children  themselves,  should  be  developed  in  the  actors  or 
characters  whom  they  have  been  led  to  admire.  A  child 
may  be  led  to  admire  qualities  on  account  of  their  relation- 
ships and  associations,  when  he  would  be  indifferent  to 
them  if  presented  separately.  If  a  child  is  selfish,  the 
occasion  for  kind  acts  should  be  prepared,  where  all  the 
acompaniments  are  agreeable.  As  the  sentiment  of  be- 
nevolence gains  tone  and  strength,  and  begins  to  realize 
some  of  those  exquisite  gratifications  which  God,  by  its 
very  constitution,  has  annexed  to  its  exercise,  then  let  the 
collateral  inducements  be  weakened,  and  the  experiments 
assume  more  of  the  positive  character  of  virtue.  In  this 
way,  a  child  so  selfish  and  envious  as  to  be  grieved  even 
at  the  enjoyment  of  others,  may  be  won,  at  last,  to  seek 
for  delight  in  offices  of  humanity  and  self-sacrifice.  There 
is  always  an  avenue  through  which  a  child's  mind  can  be 
reached  ;  the  failures  come  from  our  want  of  persever- 
ance and  sagacity  in  seeking  it.  We  must  treat  moral 
more  as  we  treat  physical  distempers.  Week  after  week 
the  mother  sits  by  the  sick-bed,  and  welcomes  fasting  and 
vigils  ;  her  watchfulness  surrounds  her  child,  and,  with  all 
the  means  and  appliances  that  wealth  or  life  can  com- 
mand, she  strives  to  bar  up  every  avenue  through  which 
death  can  approach  him.  Did  mothers  care  as  much  for 
the  virtues  and  moral  habits  as  for  the  health  and  life  of 
their  offspring,  would  they  not  be  as  patient,  as  hopeful, 
and  as  long-suffering  in  administering  antidote  and  rem- 
edy to  a  child  who  is  morally,  as  to  one  who  is  physi- 
cally, diseased  ? 

Is  it  not  in  the  way  above  described,  —  after  a  slowly 
brightening  twilight  of  weeks,  perhaps  of  months,  —  that 
the  occulist,  at  last,  lets  in  the  light  of  the  meridian  sun 
upon  the  couched  eye  ?  Is  it  not  in  this  way  that  the 


136  SPECIAL   PREPARATION. 

• 

convalescent  of  a  fevered  bed  advances,  from  a  measured 
pittance  of  the  weakest  nutrition,  to  that  audacious 
health  which  spurns  at  all  restraints  upon  appetite,  wheth- 
er as  to  quantity  or  quality  ?  For  these  healings  of  the 
diseased  eye  or  body,  we  demand  the  professional  skill " 
and  science  of  men  educated  and  trained  to  the  work  ; 
nay,  if  any  impostor  or  empiric  wantonly  tampers  with 
eye  or  life,  the  injured  party  accuses  him,  the  officers  of 
the  law  arrest  him,  the  jurors  upon  their  oaths  convict 
him,  the  judges  pass  sentence,  and  the  sheriff  executes 
the  mandates  of  the  law ;  —  while  parties,  officers,  jurors, 
judges  and  sheriffs,  with  one  consent,  employ  teachers  to 
direct  and  train  the  godlike  faculties  of  their  children, 
who  never  had  one  hour  of  special  study,  who  never  re- 
ceived one  lesson  of  special  instruction,  to  fit  them  for 
their  momentous  duties. 

If,  then,  the  business  of  education,  in  all  its  depart- 
ments, be  so  responsible ;  if  there  be  such  liability  to 
excite  and  strengthen  any  one  faculty  of  the  opening 
mind,  instead  of  its  antagonist ;  if  there  be  such  danger 
of  promoting  animal  and  selfish  propensities  into  com- 
mand over  social  and  moral  sentiments  ;  if  it  be  so  easy 
for  an  unskilful  hand  to  adjust  opportunity  to  temptation 
in  such  a  way  that  the  exposed  are  almost  certain  to  fall ; 
if  it  be  a  work  of  such  delicacy  and  difficulty  to  reclaim 
those  who  have  wandered  ;  if,  in  fine,  one,  not  deeply  con- 
versant with  the  human  soul,  with  all  its  various  facul- 
ties and  propensities,  and  with  all  the  circumstances  and 
objects  which  naturally  excite  them  to  activity,  is  in  incom- 
parably greater  danger  of  touching  the  wrong  spring  of 
action,  than  one,  unacquainted  with  music,  is  of  touching 
the  wrong  key  or  chord  of  the  most  complicated  musical 
instrument,  —  then  ought  not  every  one  of  those  who 
are  installed  into  the  sacred  office  of  teacher  to  be  "  a 


A   PREEEQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  137 

workman  who  needeth  not  to  be  ashamed  "  ?  Surely, 
they  should  know,  beforehand,  how  to  touch  the  right 
spring,  with  the  right  pressure,  at  the  right  time. 

There  is  a  terrible  disease  that  sometimes  afflicts  indi- 
viduals, by  which  all  the  muscles  of  the  body  seem  to  be 
unfastened  from  the  volitions  of  the  mind,  and  then,  after 
being  promiscuously  transposed,  to  be  re-fastened ;  so 
that  a  wrong  pair  of  muscles  is  attached  to  every  volition. 
In  such  a  case,  the  afflicted  patient  never  does  the  thing 
he  intends  to  do.  If  he  would  walk  forwards,  his  will 
starts  the  wrong  pair  of  muscles,  and  he  walks  back- 
wards. When  he  would  extend  his  right  arm  to  shake 
hands  with  you,  in  salutation,  he  starts  the  wrong  pair  of 
muscles,  thrusts  out  his  left,  and  slaps  or  punches  you. 
Precisely  so  is  it  with  the  teacher  who  knows  not  what 
faculties  of  his  pupils  to  exercise,  and  by  what  objects, 
motives,  or  processes,  they  can  be  brought  into  activity. 
He  is  the  will  of  the  school ;  they  are  the  body  which  that 
will  moves ;  and,  through  ignorance,  he  is  perpetually 
applying  his  will  to  the  wrong  points.  What  wonder, 
then,  if,  spending  day  after  day  in  pulling  at  the  wrong 
pairs  of  muscles,  the  teacher  involves  the  school  in  inex- 
tricable disorder  and  confusion,  and,  at  last,  comes  to  the 
conviction  that  they  were  never  made  to  go  right? 

But,  says  an  objector,  can  any  man  ever  attain  to  such 
knowledge  that  he  can  touch  as  he  should  this  "  harp  of 
a  thousand  strings  "  ?     Perhaps  not,  I  reply ;  but  ask,  in 
my  turn,  Cannot  every  man  know  better  than  he  now 
does  ?     Cannot  something  be  done  to  make  good  teachers 
better,  and  incompetent  ones  less  incompetent  ?     Cannot 
something  be   done  to  promote  the  progress  and  to  di-  '  j 
minish  the  dangers  of  all  our  schools?      Cannot  some- 
thing be  done  to  increase  the  intelligence  of  those  female    \ 
teachers,  to  whose  hands  our  children  are  committed  in 


138  SPECIAL   PREPARATION 

the  earliest  and  most  impressible  periods  of  childhood  ;  — 
and  thus,  in  the  end,  to  increase  the  intelligence  of  moth- 
ers, —  for  every  mother  is  ex  officio  a  member  of  the  Col- 
lege of  Teachers  ?  Cannot  something  be  done,  by  study, 
by  discussion,  by  practical  observation,  —  and  especially 
by  the  institution  of  Normal  Schools,  —  which  shall  dif- 
fuse both  the  art  and  the  science  of  teaching  more  widely 
through  our  community  than  they  have  ever  yet  been 
diffused  ? 

My  friends,  you  cannot  go  for  any  considerable  distance 
in  any  direction,  within  the  limits  of  our  beloved  Com- 
monwealth, without  passing  one  of  those  edifices  profes- 
sedly erected  for  the  education  of  our  children.  Though 
rarely  an  architectural  ornament,  yet,  always,  they  are 
a  moral  beauty,  to  the  land  in  which  we  dwell.  Enter 
with  me,  for  a  moment,  into  one  of  these  important, 
though  lowly  mansions.  Survey  those  thickly-seated 
benches.  Before  us  are  clustered  the  children  of  to-day, 
the  men  of  to-morrow,  the  immortals  of  eternity  !  What 
costly  works  of  art,  what  splendid  galleries  of  sculpture 
or  of  painting,  won  by  a  nation's  arms,  or  purchased  by  a 
nation's  wealth,  are  comparable,  in  value,  to  the  treasures 
we  have  in  these  children  ?  How  many  living  and  pal- 
pitating nerves  come  down  from  parents  and  friends,  and 
centre  in  their  young  hearts  ;  and,  as  they  shall  advance 
in  life,  other  living  and  palpitating  nerves,  which  no  man 
can  number,  shall  go  out  from  their  bosoms  to  twine 
round  other  hearts,  and  to  feel  their  throbs  of  pleasure  or 
of  pain,  of  rapture  or  of  agony  !  How  many  fortunes  of 
others  shall  be  linked  with  their  fortunes,  and  shall  share 
an  equal  fate !  As  yet,  to  the  hearts  of  these  young  be- 
ings, crime  has  not  brought  in  its  retinue  of  fears,  nor 
disappointment  its  sorrows.  Their  joys  are  joys,  and  their 
hopes  more  real  than  our  realities ;  and,  as  visions  of  the 


A   PREREQUISITE   TO   TEACHING.  139 

future  burst  upon  their  imaginations,  their  eye  kindles, 
like  the  young  eagle's  at  the  morning  sunbeam.  Group- 
ing these  children  into  separate  circles,  and  looking  for- 
ward, for  but  a  few  short  years,  to  the  fortunes  that  await 
them,  shall  we  predict  their  destiny,  in  the  terrific  lan- 
guage of  the  poet :  — 

"  These  shall  the  fury  passions  tear, 
The  vultures  of  the  mind, 
Disdainful  Anger,  pallid  Fear, 
And  Shame  that  skulks  behind. 

Ambition  this  shall  tempt  to  rise, 
Then  whirl  the  wretch  from  high, 
To  bitter  Scorn  a  sacrifice, 
And  grinning  Infamy. 

The  stings  of  Falsehood  those  shall  try, 
And  hard  Unkindness'  altered  eye 
That  mocks  the  tear  it  forced  to  flow; 
And  keen  Remorse,  with  blood  denied, 
And  moody  Madness,  laughing  wild, 
Amid  severest  woe." 

Or,  concentrating  our  whole  souls  into  one  resolve, — 
high  and  prophetically  strong,  —  that  our  duty  to  these 
children  shall  be  done,  shall  we  proclaim,  in  the  blessed 
language  of  the  Saviour :  "  IT  is  NOT  THE  WILL  OF  YOUR 
FATHER  WHICH  is  IN  HEAVEN  THAT  ONE  OF  THESE  LITTLE 

ONES   SHOULD   PERISH  "  ? 


LECTURE   m. 

1838. 


LECTURE   III. 

THE    NECESSITY    OF    EDUCATION    IN   A    REPUBLICAN 
GOVERNMENT. 

GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  CONVENTION  : — 

THE  common  arguments  in  favor  of  Education  have 
been  so  often  repeated,  that,  in  rising  to  address  you  on 
this  subject,  I  feel  like  appealing  to  your  own  judgment 
and  good  sense  to  bear  testimony  to  its  worth,  rather 
than  attempting  to  make  your  convictions  firmer,  or  your 
feelings  stronger,  by  any  attestations  of  mine. 

I  hardly  need  to  say,  that,  by  the  word  Education,  I 
mean  much  more  than  an  ability  to  read,  write,  and  keep 
common  accounts.  I  comprehend,  under  this  noble 
word,  such  a  training  of  the  body  as  shall  build  it  up 
with  robustness  and  vigor,  —  at  once  protecting  it  from 
disease,  and  enabling  it  to  act,  formatively,  upon  the 
crude  substances  of  Nature,  —  to  turn  a  wilderness  into 
cultivated  fields,  forests  into  ships,  or  quarries  and  clay- 
pits  into  villages  and  cities.  I  mean,  also,  to  include 
such  a  cultivation  of  the  intellect  as  shall  enable  it  to 
discover  those  permanent  and  mighty  laws  which  pervade 
all  parts  of  the  created  universe,  whether  material  or 
spiritual.  This  is  necessary,  because,  if  we  act  in  obedi- 
ence to  these  laws,  all  the  resistless  forces  of  Nature  become 
our  auxiliaries,  and  cheer  us  on  to  certain  prosperity  and 
triumph  ;  but,  if  we  act  in  contravention  or  defiance  of 
these  laws,  then  Nature  resists,  thwarts,  baffles  us  ;  and, 
in  the  end,  it  is  just  as  certain  that  she  will  overwhelm 

143 


144  NECESSITY   OF   EDUCATION 

us  with  ruin,  as  it  is  that  God  is  stronger  than  man. 
And,  finally,  by  the  term  Education,  I  mean  such  a  cul- 
ture of  our  moral  affections  and  religious  susceptibilities, 
as,  in  the  course  of  Nature  and  Providence,  shall  lead  to 
a  subjection  or  conformity  of  all  our  appetites,  propen- 
sities, and  sentiments  to  the  will  of  Heaven. 

My  friends,  is  it  not  manifest  to  us  all,  that  no  individ- 
ual, unless  he  has  some  acquaintance  with  the  lower 
forms  of  education,  can  superintend  even  the  coarsest 
and  most  common  interests  of  life,  without  daily  error 
and  daily  shame?  The  general  utility  of  knowledge, 
also,  and  the  higher  and  more  enduring  satisfactions  of 
the  intellect,  resulting  from  the  discovery  and  contem- 
plation of  those  truths  with  which  the  material  and  the 
spiritual  universe  are  alike  filled,  impart  to  this  subject 
a  true  dignity  and  a  sublime  elevation.  But,  in  its  office 
of  attempering  feelings  which  otherwise  would  blast  or 
consume  us  ;  —  in  its  authority  to  say  to  the  clamorous 
propensities  of  our  nature,  "Peace,  be  still!" — in  its 
auxiliary  power  to  fit  us  for  the  endearments  of  domestic, 
for  the  duties  of  social,  and  for  the  sanctity  of  immortal 
life;  —  in  its  twofold  office  of  enhancing  the  enjoyment 
which  each  one  of  us  may  feel  in  the  virtue  and  happiness 
of  all  others,  and  of  increasing  the  virtue  and  happiness 
of  all  others,  to  make  a  larger  fund  for  common  enjoy- 
ment ;  —  in  these  high  and  sacred  prerogatives,  the  cause 
of  education  lays  claim  to  our  mind  and  heart  and 
strength,  as  one  of  the  most  efficient  instruments  pre- 
pared by  the  Creator  for  the  welfare  of  His  creatures, 
and  the  honor  of  Himself. 

Take  any  individual  you  please,  separate  him  from  the 
crowd  of  men,  and  look  at  him,  apart  and  alone,  —  like 
some  Robinson  Crusoe  in  a  far-off  island  of  the  ocean, 
without  any  human  being  around  him,  with  no  prospect 


IN  A  REPUBLICAN  GOVERNMENT.         145 

of  leaving  any  human  being  behind  him.  —  and,  even 
in  such  a  solitude,  how  authoritative  over  his  actions, 
how  decisive  of  his  contemplations  and  of  his  condition, 
are  the  instructions  he  received  and  the  habits  he  formed 
in  early  life  !  But  now  behold  him  as  one  of  the  tumul- 
tuous throng  of  men ;  observe  the  wide  influences  which 
he  exerts  upon  others,  —  in  the  marts  of  business,  in  the 
resorts  of  pleasure,  in  the  high  places  of  official  trust,  — 
and  reflect  how  many  of  all  these  influences,  whether 
beneficent  or  malign,  depend  upon  the  education  he  has 
received,  and  you  will  have  another  gauge  or  standard 
whereby  to  estimate  the  importance  of  our  theme.  Look 
at  him  again,  not  as  a  being,  coming,  we  know  not 
whence,  alighting  for  a  brief  residence  upon  this  earth, 
and  then  making  his  exit  through  the  door  of  the  tomb, 
to  be  seen  and  heard  of  no  more,  and  leaving  no  more 
impression  upon  society  of  his  ways  or  works,  than  the 
sea-bird  leaves  upon  the  surface  of  the  deep,  when  she 
stoops  from  the  upper  air,  dips  her  breast  for  a  moment 
in  the  wave,  and  then  rises  again  to  a  viewless  height ; 
but  look  at  him  in  his  relations  to  posterity,  as  the  father 
of  a  family,  as  a  member  of  a  generation  which  sows 
those  seeds  of  virtue  or  vice,  that,  centuries  hence,  shall 
bear  fruit  or  poison  ;  — look  at  him  as  a  citizen  in  a  free 
government,  throwing  his  influence  and  his  vote  into  one 
or  the  other  of  the  scales  where  peace  and  war,  glory  and 
infamy,  are  weighed  ;  —  look  at  him  in  these  relations, 
and  consider  how  a  virtuous  or  a  vicious  education  tends 
to  fit  or  to  unfit  him  for  them  all,  and  you  will  catch  one 
more  glimpse  of  the  importance  of  the  subject  now  pre- 
sented to  your  consideration.  But  if  we  ascend  to  a  still 
higher'point  of  vision,  and, — forgetting  the  earthly,  per- 
sonal career,  and  the  wide  sphere  of  social  influences, 
and  those  acts  of  life  which  survive  life,  —  fasten  our 

VOL.   I.  10 


146  NECESSITY   OF   EDUCATION 

eyes  upon  effects  which  education  may  throw  forward 
into  immortal  destinies,  it  is  then  that  we  are  awed, 
amazed,  overpowered,  by  the  thought,  that  we  have  been 
created  and  placed  in  a  system,  where  the  soul's  eternal 
flight  may  be  made  higher  or  lower  by  those  who  plume 
its  tender  wings  and  direct  its  early  course.  Such  is  the 
magnitude,  the  transcendence  of  this  subject.  In  a  phil- 
osophical view,  beginning  at  what  point  we  will,  and  fol- 
lowing the  most  rigid  connection  and  dependence  of 
cause  and  effect,  of  antecedent  and  consequence,  we  shall 
find  that  education  is  intimately  related  to  every  good, 
and  to  every  evil,  which,  as  mortal,  or  as  immortal  be- 
ings, we  can  desire  or  dread. 

Were  a  being  of  an  understanding  mind  and  a  benevo- 
lent heart,  to  see,  for  the  first  time,  a  peaceful  babe  re- 
posing in  its  cradle,  or  on  its  mother's  breast,  and  were 
he  to  be  told,  that  that  infant  had  been  so  constituted 
that  every  joint  and  organ  in  its  whole  frame  might 
become  the  rendezvous  of  diseases  and  racking  pains ; 
that  such  was  its  internal  structure,  that  every  nerve  and 
fibre  beneath  its  skin  might  be  made  to  throb  with  a 
peculiar  torture  ;  that,  in  the  endless  catalogue  of  human 
disasters,  maladies,  adversities  or  shame,  there  was 
scarcely  one  to  which  it  would  not  be  exposed  ;  that,  in 
the  whole  criminal  law  of  society,  and  in  the  more  com- 
prehensive and  self-executing  law  of  God,  there  was  not 
a  crime  which  its  heart  might  not  at  some  time  will,  and 
its  hand  perpetrate  ;  that,  in  the  ghastly  host  of  tragic 
passions,  —  Fear,  Envy,  Jealousy,  Hate,  Remorse,  De- 
spair, —  there  was  not  one  which  might  not  lacerate  its 
soul,  and  bring  down  upon  it  an  appropriate  catastro- 
phe ;  —  were  the  benevolent  spectator  whom  I  have 
supposed,  to  see  this  environment  of  ills  underlying, 
surrounding,  overhanging  their  feeble  and  unconscious 


IN   A    REPUBLICAN  GOVERNMENT.  147 

victim,  and,  as  it  were,  watching  to  dart  forth  and  seize 
it,  might  he  not  be  excused  for  wishing  the  newly-created 
spirit  well  back  again  into  nonentity  ? 

But  we  cannot  return  to  nonentity.  We  have  no  ref- 
uge in  annihilation.  Creative  energy  has  been  exerted. 
Our  first  attribute,  the  vehicle  of  all  our  other  attributes, 
—  is  immortality.  We  are  of  indestructible  mould. 
Do  what  else  we  please  with  our  nature  and  our  faculties, 
we  cannot  annihilate  them.  Go  where  we  please,  self- 
desertion  is  impossible.  Banished,  we  may  be,  from  the 
enjoyment  of  God,  but  never  from  his  dominion.  There 
is  no  right  or  power  of  expatriation.  There  is  110  neigh- 
boring universe  to  fly  to.  If  we  forswear  allegiance,  it  is 
but  an  empty  form,  for  the  laws  by  which  we  are  bound 
do  not  only  surround  us,  but  are  in  us,  and  parts  of  us. 
Whatsoever  other  things  may  be  possible,  yet  to  break  up 
or  suspend  this  perpetuity  of  existence  ;  to  elude  this  sus- 
ceptibility to  pains,  at  once  indefinite  in  number  and  in- 
describable in  severity  ;  to  silence  conscience,  or  say  that 
it  shall  not  hold  dominion  over  the  soul ;  to  sink  the  past 
in  oblivion  ;  or  to  alter  any  of  the  conditions  on  which 
Heaven  has  made  our  bliss  and  our  woe  to  depend, — 
these  things  are  impossible.  Personality  has  been  given 
us,  by  which  we  must  refer  all  sensations,  emotions,  re- 
solves, to  our  conscious  selves.  Identity  has  been  given 
us,  by  virtue  of  which,  through  whatever  ages  we  exist, 
our  whole  being  is  made  a  unity.  Now,  whether  curses 
or  blessings,  by  these  conditions  of  our  nature  we  must 
stand  ;  for  they  are  appointed  to  us,  by  a  law  higher  than 
Pate,  —  by  the  law  of  God. 

Were  any  one  of  this  assembly  to  be  shipwrecked  upon 
a  desert  island,  —  "  out  of  Humanity's  reach," —  would 
it  not  be  his  first  act  to  ascend  the  nearest  eminence  and 
explore  his  position  ?  Would  he  not  at  once  strive  to 


148  NECESSITY   OF    EDUCATION 

descry  the  dangers  and  the  resources  by  which  he  might 
bo  surrounded  ?  And,  if  reason,  or  even  an  enlightened 
self-love,  constitutes  any  attribute  of  our  nature,  is  it  any 
the  less  our  duty,  —  finding  ourselves  to  be,  and  to  have 
entered  upon  an  interminable  career  of  existence,  —  find- 
ing ourselves  inwrought  and  organized  with  certain  fac- 
ulties and  susceptibilities,  so  that  we  are  necessitated  to 
enjoy  pleasure  or  to  suffer  pain,  and  so  that  neutrality 
between  good  and  evil  is  impossible,  —  is  it,  I  say,  any 
the  less  our  duty  and  our  interest  to  look  around  us  and 
within  us,  and  to  see  what,  on  the  whole,  we  can  best  do 
with  this  nature  and  with  these  faculties,  of  which  we 
find  ourselves  in  possession  ?  Ought  we  not  to  inquire 
what  mighty  forces  of  Nature  and  of  Providence  are 
sweeping  us  along,  and  whither  their  currents  are  tending  ?  . 
what  parts  of  the  great  system  in  which  we  are  placed 
can  be  accommodated  to  us,  and  to  what  parts  we  must 
accommodate  ourselves  ? 

Before  such  a  theme  I  stand  in  awe.  On  which  side 
shall  its  vastness  be  approached  ?  Shall  I  speak  of  the 
principles  on  which  an  educational  system  for  a  State 
should  be  organized ;  or  of  the  means  and  agencies  by 
which  it  should  be  administered,  in  contrast  with  the  ab- 
sence of  any  fundamental  plan  ?  Prom  the  Capitol,  where 
the  sovereign  la,w  is  enacted,  and  whence  it  is  promul- 
gated, to  the  school  district  and  the  fireside,  where  the  grand 
results  of  that  law  are  to  appear,  in  a  more  prosperous, 
more  intelligent,  more  virtuous,  and,  of  course,  more  hap- 
py generation  of  men  and  women,  there  is  a  vast  inter- 
vening distance  ;  —  upon  which  one  of  the  many  links  of 
the  chain  that  binds  these  two  extremes  together  shall  I 
expatiate  ? 

I  venture,  my  friends,  at  this  time,  to  solicit  your  at- 
tention, while  I  attempt  to  lay  before  you  some  of  the  re- 


IN   A   REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  149 

lations  which  we  bear  to  the  cause  of  Education,  because 
we  are  the  citizens  of  a  Republic  ;  and  thence  to  deduce 
some  of  the  reasons,  which,  under  our  political  institu- 
tions, make  the  proper  training  of  the  rising  generation 
the  highest  earthly  duty  of  the  risen. 

It  is  a  truism,  that  free  institutions  multiply  human 
energies.  A  chained  body  cannot  do  much  harm ;  a 
chained  mind  can  do  as  little.  In  a  despotic  govern- 
ment, the  human  faculties  arc  benumbed  and  paralyzed  ; 
in  a  Republic,  they  glow  with  an  intense  life,  and  burst 
forth  with  uncontrollable  impetuosity.  In  the  former, 
they  aro  circumscribed  and  straitened  in  their  range  of 
action  ;  in  the  latter,  they  have  "  ample  room  and  verge 
enough,"  and  may  rise  to  glory  or  plunge  into  ruin. 
Amidst  universal  ignorance,  there  cannot  be  such  wrong- 
notions  about  right,  as  there  may  be  in  a  community  par- 
tially enlightened  ;  and  false  conclusions  which  have  been 
reasoned  out  are  infinitely  worse  than  blind  impulses. 

To  demonstrate  the  necessity  of  education  in  our  gov- 
ernment, I  shall  not  attempt  to  derive  my  proofs  from 
the  history  of  other  Republics.  Such  arguments  are 
becoming  stale.  Besides,  there  are  so  many  points  of 
difference  between  our  own  political  institutions,  and 
those  of  any  other  government  calling  itself  free,  which 
has  ever  existed,  that  the  objector  perpetually  eludes  or 
denies  the  force  of  our  reasoning,  by  showing  some  want 
of  analogy  between  the  cases  presented. 

I  propose,  therefore,  on  this  occasion,  not  to  adduce, 
as  proofs,  what  has  been  true  only  in  past  times  ;  but 
what  is  true  at  the  present  time,  and  must  always  con- 
tinue to  be  true.  I  shall  rely,  not  on  precedents,  but  on 
the  nature  of  things  ;  and  draw  my  arguments  less  from 
history  than  from  humanity. 

Now  it  is  undeniable  that,  with  the  possession  of  cer- 


150  NECESSITY   OP   EDUCATION 

tain  higher  faculties,  —  common  to  all  mankind,  —  whose 
proper  cultivation  will  bear  us  upward  to  hitherto  undis- 
covered regions  of  prosperity  and  glory,  we  possess,  also, 
certain  lower  faculties  or  propensities  ;  —  equally  com- 
mon ;  —  whose  improper  indulgence  leads,  inevitably,  to 
tribulation,  and  anguish,  and  ruin.  The  propensities  to 
which  I  refer  seem  indispensable  to  our  temporal  exist- 
ence, and,  if  restricted  within  proper  limits,  they  are  pro- 
motive  of  our  enjoyment ;  but,  beyond  those  limits,  they 
work  dishonor  and  infatuation,  madness  and  despair. 
As  servants,  they  are  indispensable  ;  as  masters,  they  tor- 
ture as  well  as  tyrannize.  Now  despotic  and  arbitrary 
governments  have  dwarfed  and  crippled  the  powers  of 
doing  evil  as  much  as  the  powers  of  doing  good ;  but  a 
republican  government,  from  the  very  fact  of  its  freedom, 
unreins  their  speed,  and  lets  loose  their  strength.  It  is 
justly  alleged  against  despotisms,  that  they  fetter,  muti- 
late, almost  extinguish  the  noblest  powers  of  the  human 
soul ;  but  there  is  a  per  contra  to  this,  for  which  we  have 
not  given  them  credit ;  —  they  circumscribe  the  ability  to 
do  the  greatest  evil,  as  well  as  to  do  the  greatest  good. 

My  proposition,  therefore,  is  simply  this : — If  republican 
institutions  do  wake  up  unexampled  energies  in  the  whole 
mass  of  a  people,  and  give  them  implements  of  unexam- 
pled power  wherewith  to  work  out  their  will,  then  these 
same  institutions  ought  also  to  confer  upon  that  people 
unexampled  wisdom  and  rectitude.  If  these  institutions 
give  greater  scope  and  impulse  to  the  lower  order  of  fac- 
ulties belonging  to  the  human  mind,  then  they  must 
also  give  more  authoritative  control  and  more  skilful 
guidance  to  the  higher  ones.  If  they  multiply  tempta- 
tions, they  must  fortify  against  them.  If  they  quicken 
the  activity  and  enlarge  the  sphere  of  the  appetites  and 
passions,  they  must,  at  least  in  an  equal  ratio,  establish 


IN  A  REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  151 

the  authority  and  extend  the  jurisdiction  'of  reason  and 
conscience.  In  a  word,  we  must  not  add  to  the  impul- 
sive, without  also  adding  to  the  regulating  forces. 

If  we  maintain  institutions,  which  bring  us  within  the 
action  of  new  and  unheard-of  powers,  without  taking  any 
corresponding  measures  for  the  government  of  those 
powers,  we  shall  perish  by  the  very  instruments  prepared 
for  our  happiness. 

The  truth  has  been  so  often  asserted,  that  there  is  no 
security  for  a  republic  but  in  morality  and  intelligence, 
that  a  repetition  of  it  seems  hardly  in  good  taste.  But 
all  permanent  blessings  being  founded  on  permanent 
truths,  a  continued  observance  of  the  truth  is  the  condi- 
tion of  a  continued  enjoyment  of  the  blessing.  I  know 
we  are  often  admonished  that,  without  intelligence  and 
virtue,  as  a  chart  and  a  compass,  to  direct  us  in  our  un- 
tried political  voyage,  we  shall  perish  in  the  first  storm  ; 
but  I  venture  to  add  that,  without  these  qualities,  we 
shall  not  wait  for  a  storm,  —  we  cannot  weather  a  calm. 
If  the  sea  is  as  smooth  as  glass  we  shall  founder,  for  we 
are  in  a  stone  boat.  Unless  these  qualities  pervade  the 
general  head  and  the  general  heart,  not  only  will  repub- 
lican institutions  vanish  from  amongst  us,  but  the  words 
prosperity  and  happiness  will  become  obsolete.  And  all 
this  may  be  affirmed,  not  from  historical  examples  mere- 
ly, but  from  the  very  constitution  of  our  nature.  We 
are  created  and  brought  into  life  with  a  set  of  innate, 
organic  dispositions  or  propensities,  which  a  free  govern- 
ment rouses  and  invigorates,  and  which,  if  not  bridled  and 
tamed,  by  our  actually  seeing  the  eternal  laws  of  justice, 
as  plainly  as  we  can  see  the  sun  in  the  heavens,  —  and 
by  our  actually  feeling  the  sovereign  sentiment  of  duty, 
as  plainly  as  we  feel  the  earth  beneath  our  feet,  —  will 
hurry  us  forward  into  regions  populous  with  every  form 
of  evil. 


152  NECESSITY   OP   EDUCATIOS 

Divines,  moralists,  metaphysicians,  —  almost  without 
exception,  —  regard  the  human  being  as  exceedingly 
complex  in  his  mental  or  spiritual  constitution,  as  well 
as  in  his  hodily  organization  ;  —  they  regard  him  as  hav- 
ing a  plurality  of  tendencies  and  affections,  though 
brought  together  and  embodied  in  one  person.  Hence, 
in  all  discussions  or  disquisitions  respecting  human  na- 
ture, they  analyze  or  assort  it  into  different  classes  of 
powers  and  faculties. 

First,  there  is  a  conscience  in  every  one  of  us,  and  a 
sense  of  responsibleness  to  God,  which  establish  a  moral 
relation  between  us  and  our  Creator ;  and  which,  — 
though  we  could  call  all  the  grandeur  and  the  splendors 
of  the*  universe  our  own,  and  were  lulled  and  charmed 
by  all  its  music  and  its  beauty,  —  will  forever  banish  all 
true  repose  from  our  bosom,  unless  our  nature  and  our 
lives  are  supposed  to  be  in  harmony  with  the  divine  will. 
The  object  of  these  faculties  is,  their  Infinite  Creator ; 
and  they  never  can  be  supremely  happy  unless  they  are 
tuned  to  perfect  concord  with  every  note  in  the  celestial 
anthems  of  love  and  praise. 

Then  there  is  a  set  of  faculties  that  we  denominate  so- 
cial or  sympathetic,  among  the  most  conspicuous  of  which 
is  benevolence  or  philanthropy,  —  a  sentiment  which  mys- 
teriously makes  our  pulse  throb,  and  our  nerves  shrink, 
at  the  pains  or  adversity  of  others,  even  though,  at  the 
same  time,  our  own  frame  is  whole,  and  our  own  for- 
tunes gladdening.  How  beautiful  and  marvellous  a 
thing  it  is,  when  imbosomed  in  a  happy  family,  sur- 
rounded by  friends  and  children,  ->.-  which  even  Paradise 
had  not,  —  that  the  history  of  idolatry  in  the  far-off  is- 
lands of  the  Pacific,  or  of  the  burning  of  Hindoo  widows 
on  the  other  side  of  the  globe,  amongst  a  people  whom 
we  never  saw  and  never  shall  see,  should  pierce  our 


IN   A   REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  153 

hearts  like  a  knife  !  How  glorious  a  quality  of  our  na- 
ture it  is,  that  the  story  of  some  old  martyr  or  hero,  who 
nobly  upheld  truth  with  life,  —  though  his  dust  has  now 
been  blown  about  by  the  winds  for  twenty  centuries,  — 
should  transport  us  with  such  feelings  of  admiration  and 
ecstasy,  that  we  long  to  have  been  he,  and  to  have  borne 
all  his  sufferings  ;  and  we  find  ourselves  involuntarily 
sublimed  by  so  noble  a  passion,  that  the  most  terrible  form 
of  death,  if  hallowed  by  a  righteous  cause,  looks  lovely 
as  a  bride  to  the  bridegroom  ! 

There  are  also  the  yearning,  doting  fondness  of  parents 
for  children,  of  natural  kindred  for  each  other,  and  the 
passionate,  yet  pure  affection  of  the  sexes,  which  fit  us 
for  the  duties  and  the  endearments  of  domestic  life. 
Even  that  vague  general  attachment  to  our  fellow- 
beings,  which  binds  men  together  in  fraternal  associa- 
tions, is  so  strong,  and  is  universally  recognized  as  so 
natural,  that  we  look  upon  hermits  and  solitaries  as  crea- 
tures half-mad  or  half-monstrous.  The  sphere  of  these 
sentiments  or  affections  is  around  us  and  before  us,  — 
family,  neighborhood,  country,  kind,  posterity. 

And  lastly,  there  is  the  strictly  selfish  part  of  our  na- 
ture, which  consists  of  a  gang  of  animal  appetites,  —  a 
horde  of  bandit  propensities,  —  each  one  of  which,  by 
its  own  nature,  is  deaf  to  the  voice  of  God,  reckless  of 
the  welfare  of  men,  blind,  remorseless,  atheistic  ;  — each 
one  of  the  whole  pack  being  supremely  bent  upon  its  own 
indulgence,  and  ready  to  barter  earth  and  heaven  to  win 
it.  We  all  have  some  pretty  definite  idea  of  beasts  of 
prey  and  of  birds  of  prey  ;  but  not  among  the  whelps 
of  the  lion's  lair,  not  among  the  young  of  the  vulture's 
nest,  are  there  any  spoilers  at  all  comparable  to  those 
that  may  be  trained  from  the  appetites  and  propensities 
which  each  human  being  brings  with  him  into  the  world. 


154  .      NECESSITY   OF   EDUCATION 

I  am  sorry  not  to  be  able  to  speak  of  this  part  of  our 
common  nature  in  a  more  complimentary  manner ;  but 
to  utter  what  facts  will  not  warrant,  would  be  to  ex- 
change the  records  of  truth  for  a  song  of  Delilah. 

The  first  of  these  animal  propensities  is  the  simple 
want  of  food  or  nourishment.  This  appetite  may  be  very 
gentlemanly  and  well-behaved.  There  is  nothing  in  it 
necessarily  incompatible  with  decorum  and  good-breed- 
ing, or  with  the  conscientious  fulfilment  of  every  pri- 
vate and  every  public  duty.  When  duly  indulged,  and 
duly  restrained,  it  furnishes  the  occasions,  —  around  the 
family  and  the  hospitable  board,  —  for  much  of  the  pleas- 
ure of  domestic,  and  the  enjoyment  of  social  existence. 
But  thousands  go  through  life,  without  ever  having  oc- 
casion to  know  or  to  think  of  its  awful  strength.  Be- 
hold, what  this  appetite  has  actually  and  not  unfrequently 
become,  when,  taking  the  ghastly  form  of  Hunger  in  a 
besieged  city,  or  amongst  a  famishing  people,  it  forces 
the  living  to  feed  upon  flesh  torn  from  the  limbs  of  the 
dead.  Look  at  that  open  boat,  weltering  in  mid-ocean  ; 
it  holds  the  crew  of  a  foundered  vessel  who  have  escaped 
with  life  only,  but  days  and  days  have  passed  away,  and 
no  morsel  of  food  or  drop  of  drink  has  assuaged  the  tor- 
tures of  hunger  and  thirst.  At  first,  they  wept  together 
as  suffering  friends,  then  they  prayed  together  as  loving 
Christians  ;  but  now  friendship  is  extinct  and  prayer  is 
choked,  for  hunger  has  grown  to  a  cannibal,  uttering 
horrible  whispers,  and  proposing  the  fatal  lot,  by  which 
the  blood  of  one  is  to  fill  a  bowl  to  be  quaffed  by  the  rest ! 
Look  again  at  the  ravages  of  this  appetite,  in  its  other 
and  more  familiar,  though  not  less  appalling  forms  ;  — 
look  at  its  havoc  of  life  in  China,  where  thousands  annu- 
ally perish  by  opium ;  in  Turkey,  where  the  pipe  kills 
more  than  the  bowstring  ;  and  at  the  Golgothas  of  Intern- 


IN  A  REPUBLICAN  GOVERNMENT.          155 

perance,  in  Ireland,*  in  Old  England,  and  in  New  Eng- 
land. Now,  the  elements  of  this  appetite  are  common 
to  us  all ;  and  no  uutempted  mortal  can  tell  what  he 
would  do,  or  would  not  do,  if  he  were  in  the  besieged 
city,  or  in  the  ocean-tost,  provisionless  boat.  The  sensa- 
tions belonging  to  this  appetite  reside  in  the  ends  of  a  few 
nerves,  —  called  by  the  anatomists,  papillce,  —  which  are 
situated  about  the  tongue  and  .throat ;  and  yet,  on  the 
wants  of  this  narrow  spot,  are  founded  the  cultivation  of 
myriads  of  orchards,  vineyards  and  gardens,  the  tilling 
of  grain-fields,  prairie-like  in  extent,  the  scouring  of  for- 
ests for  game,  the  dredging  of  seas,  and  the  rearing  of 
cattle  upon  a  thousand  hills.  Granaries  are  heaped,  cel- 
lars filled,  vintages  flow,  to  gratify  this  instinct  for  food. 
And  what  toils  and  perils,  what  European  as  well  as 
African  slavery  among  the  ignorant,  and  what  epicurean 
science  among  the  learned,  have  their  origin  and  end  in 
this  one  appetite !  Once,  cooling  draughts  from  the 
fountain,  and  delicious  fruits  from  the  earth,  sufficed  for 
its  demands.  Now,  whenever  the  banquet  table  is  spread, 
there  must  be  mountains  of  viands  and  freshets  of  wine. 
What  absurdities  as  well  as  wickednesses  it  tempts  men, 
otherwise  rational  and  religious,  to  commit.  Have  we 
not  all  seen  instances  of  men,  who  will  ask  the  blessing 
of  Heaven  upon  the  bounties  wherewith  a  paternal  Provi- 
dence has  spread  their  daily  board,  —  who  will  pray  that 
their  bodies  may  be  nourished  and  strengthened  for  use- 
fulness, by  partaking  of  its  supplies  ;  and  will  then  sit 
down  and  almost  kill  themselves  by  indulgence  !  It  is  as 
impossible  to  satisfy  the  refinements,  as  to  satiate  the 
grossness  of  this  appetite.  The  Roman,  Apicius,  by  his 
gold,  provided  a  dish  for  his  table  composed  of  thousands 

*  At  the  time  this  was  written,  the  redemption  of  Ireland  by  Father  Mathew 
was  only  beginning. 


156  NECESSITY   OP   EDUCATION 

of  nightingales'  tongues  ;  a  despot,  by  his  power,  distils 
the  happiness  of  a  thousand  slaves,  to  make  one  delicious 
drop  for  his  palate.  This  appetite,  then,  though  consist- 
ing of  only  a  few  sensations  about  the  mouth  and  throat, 
is  a  crucible  in  which  the  treasures  of  the  world  may  be 
dissolved.  Behold  the  epicure  and  the  inebriate.  —  men 
who  affect  a  lofty  indignation  if  you  question  that  they 
are  rational  beings  ;  —  see  them  bartering  friends,  family 
and  fame,  body,  soul  and  estate,  —  to  gratify  a  space  not 
more  than  two  inches  square  in  the  inside  of  the  mouth  ! 
Do  we  not  need  some  new  form  of  expression,  some  sin- 
gle word,  where  we  can  condense,  into  one  monosyllable, 
the  meaning  of  ten  thousand  fools  ! 

Take  another  of  these  animal  wants,  —  that  of  cloth- 
ing. How  insignificant  it  seems,  and  yet  of  what  excess- 
es it  is  capable  !  What  sacrifices  it  demands  !  what  fol- 
lies and  crimes  it  suborns  us  to  commit !  Compare  the 
first  fig-leaf  suit  with  the  monthly  publication  of  London 
and  Parisian  fashions  !  Our  first  parents  began  with  a 
vegetable,  pea-green  wardrobe,  plucked  from  the  nearest 
tree,  and  were  their  own  dress-makers.  Now,  how  many 
fields  are  tilled  for  linen  and  cotton  and  silks  !  how  many 
races  of  animals  are  domesticated,  or  are  hunted  under 
the  line,  around  the  poles,  in  ocean  or  in  air,  that  their 
coverings  may  supply  the  materials  of  ours  !  How  many 
ships  plough  the  ocean  to  fetch  and  carry  ;  what  ponder- 
ous machinery  rolls  ;  how  many  warehouses  burst  with 
an  opulence  of  merchandise,  —  all  having  ultimate  refer- 
ence to  this  demand  for  covering  !  Nor  is  there  any  as- 
signable limit  to  the  refinements  and  the  expenditures, 
to  the  frauds  and  the  cruelties,  which  may  grow  on  this 
stock.  The  demands  of  this  propensity,  like  those  of  the 
former,  if  suffered  to  go  onward  unrestrained,  increase  to 
infinity.  The  Austrian,  Prince  Esterhazy,  lately  visited 


IN   A    REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  157 

the  different  courts  of  Europe,  dressed  in  a  coat  which 
cost  five  hundred  thousand  dollars  ;  and  it  cost  him  from 
five  hundred  to  a  thousand  dollars  every  time  he  put  it 
on.  Yet,  undoubtedly,  if  he  had  not  thought  himself 
sadly  stinted  in  his  means,  he  would  have  had  a  better 
coat,  and  underclothes  to  match  ! 

Nor  is  this  all  which  is  founded  upon  the  sensations  of 
the  skin,  when  the  thermometer  is  much  below,  or  much 
above  sixty-five  degrees.  Shelter  must  be  had  ;  and  how 
much  marbje  and  granite  rises  from  the  quarry  ;  what 
masses  of  clay  are  shaped  and  hardened  into  bricks  ;  how 
many  majestic  forests  start  from  their  stations,  and  move 
afield,  to  be  built  up  into  villages  and  cities  and  temples, 
for  the  habitations  of  men  !  And,  notwithstanding  all 
that  has  been  done  under  the  promptings  of  this  appe- 
tite, who,  if  his  wishes  could  execute  themselves,  would 
remain  satisfied  with  the  house  he  lives  in,  the  temple  he 
worships  in,  or  the  tomb  in  which  he  expects  to  sleep  ? 

Again  ;  there  are  seasons  of  the  year  when  vegetable 
life  fails,  when  the  corn  and  the  vine  cease  to  luxuriate 
in  the  fields,  and  the  orchards  no  longer  bend  with  fruit- 
age. '  There  is  also  the  season  of  infancy,  when,  though 
bountiful  Nature  should  scatter  her  richest  productions 
spontaneously  around  us,  we  could  not  reach  out  our 
hands  to  gather  them  ;  and  again,  there  is  the  season  of 
old  age,  with  its  attendant  infirmities,  when  our  exhaust- 
ed frame  can  no  longer  procure  the  necessaries  of  exist- 
ence. Now,  that  in  summer  we  may  provide  for  winter, 
—  that  during  the  vigor  of  manhood  we  may  lay  up  pro- 
visions for  the  imbecility  of  our  old  age,  and  for  the  help- 
lessness of  children,  we  have  been  endued  by  our  Ma- 
ker with  an  instinct  of  acquisition,  of  accumulation  ;  — 
or  with  a  desire,  as  we  familiarly  express  it,  to  lay  up 
something  for  a  rainy  day.  Thus  a  disposition,  or  mental 


158  NECESSITY   OF   EDUCATION 

pre-adaptation,  was  given  us,  before  birth,  for  these  neces- 
sities which  were  to  arise  after  it,  just  as  our  eye  was 
fitted  for  the  light  to  shine  through,  before  it  was  born 
into  this  heaven-full  of  sunshine.  Look  at  this  blind  in- 
stinct, —  the  love  of  gain,  —  as  it  manifests  itself  even  in 
infancy.  A  child,  at  first,  has  no  idea  that  there  is  any 
other  owner  of  the  universe  but  himself.  Whatever 
pleases  him,  he  forthwith  appropriates.  His  wants  are 
his  title-deeds  and  bills  of  sale.  He  does  not  ask  in 
whose  garden  the  fruit  grew,  or  by  whose  diving  the 
pearl  was  fished  up.  Carry  him  through  a  museum  or  a 
market,  and  he  demands,  in  perfectly  intelligible,  though 
perhaps  in  inarticulate  language,  whatever  arrests  his 
fancy.  His  whole  body  of  law,  whether  civil  or  crimi- 
nal,—  omne  ejus  corpus  juris,  —  is  in  three  words,"! 
want  it."  If  the  candle  pleases  him,  he  demands  the 
candle  ;  if  the  rainbow  and  the  stars  please  him,  he  de- 
mands the  rainbow  and  the  stars. 

And  how  does  this  blind  instinct  overleap  the  objects 
for  which  it  was  given  !  •  Not  content  with  competency  in 
means,  and  disdaining  the  gradual  accumulations  of  hon- 
est industry,  it  rises  to  insatiate  avarice  and  rapacity. 
From  the  accursed  thirst  for  gold  have  come  the  felon 
frauds  of  the  market-place,  and  the  more  wicked  pious 
frauds  of  the  church,  the  robber's  blow,  the  burglars 
stealthy  step  around  the  midnight  couch,  the  pirate's 
murders,  the  rapine  of  cities,  the  plundering  and  captiv- 
ity of  nations.  Even  now,  in  self-styled  Christian  com- 
munities, are  there  not  men  who,  under  the  sharp  goad- 
ings  of  this  impulse,  equip  vessels  to  cross  the  ocean,  — 
not  to  carry  the  glad  tidings  of  the  gospel  to  heathen 
lands,  but  to  descend  upon  defenceless  villages  in  a  whirl- 
wind of  fire  and  ruin,  to  kidnap  men,  women  and  chil- 
dren, and  to  transport  them  through  all  the  horrors  of 


IN   A    REPUBLICAN  GOVERNMENT.  150 

the  middle  passage,  where  their  cries  of  agony  and  de- 
spair outvoice  the  storm,  that  the  wretched  victims  may 
at  last  be  sold  into  remorseless  bondage,  to  wear  chains, 
and  to  bequeath  chains  ;  —  and  all  this  is  perpetrated 
and  suffered  because  a  little  gold  can  be  transmuted,  by 
such  fiery  alchemy,  from  human  tears  and  blood  !  Such 
is  the  inexorable  power  of  cupidity,  in  self-styled  Chris- 
tian lands,  in  sight  of  the  spires  of  God's  temples  point- 
ing upward  to  heaven,  which,  if  Truth  had  its  appropriate 
emblems,  would  be  reversed  and  point  downward  to  hell. 

Startle  not,  my  friends,  at  these  far-off  enormities. 
Are  there  not  monsters  amongst  ourselves,  who  sell  their 
own  children  into  bondage  for  the  money  they  can  earn  ? 
who  coin  not  only  the  health  of  their  own  offspring,  but 
their  immortal  capacities  of  intelligence  and  virtue,  into 
pelf  ?  Are  there  not  others,  who,  at  home,  at  the  town- 
meeting,  and  at  the  school-meeting,  win  all  the  victories 
of  ignorance  by  the  cry  of  expense  ?  Are  there  not  men 
amongst  us,  possessed  of  superfluous  wealth,  who  will 
vote  against  a  blackboard  for  a  schoolroom,  because  the 
scantling  costs  a  shilling  and  the  paint  sixpence  ! 

Nay,  do  we  not  see  men  of  lofty  intellects,  of  mind 
formed  to  go  leaping  and  bounding  on  from  star  to  star 
in  the  firmament  of  knowledge,  absorbed,  sunk,  in  the 
low  pursuit  of  gain  ?  and  if,  perchance,  some  of  their  su- 
perfluous coffers  are  lost,  they  go  mad,  —  the  fools  !  — 
and  whine  and  mope  in  the  wards  of  a  lunatic  hospital, 
because,  forsooth,  they  must  content  themselves  with  a 
little  less  equipage,  or  upholstery,  or  millinery  !  Such 
follies,  losses,  crimes,  prove  to  what  infinite  rapacity  the 
instinct  of  acquisition  may  grow. 

Again  ;  there  is  the  natural  sentiment  of  self-respect, 
or  self-appreciation  ;  —  when  existing  in  excess,  it  is 
popularly  called  self-esteem.  This  innate  tendency  im- 


160  NECESSITY   OP   EDUCATION 

parts  to  every  individual  the  feeling  that,  in  and  of  him- 
self, he  is  of  some  mark  and  consequence.  This  instinct 
was  given  us  that  it  might  act  outwards  and  embody 
itself  in  all  dignity  and  nobleness  of  conduct ;  that  it 
might  preserve  us,  at  all  times,  from  whatever  is  beneath 
us  or  unworthy  of  us,  though  we  were  assured  that  no 
other  being  in  the  universe  knew  it,  or  ever  would  know 
it.  For,  when  a  man  of  true  honor,  —  one  who  has 
formed  a,  just  estimate  of  the  noble  capacities  with  which 
God  has  endowed  him,  and  of  his  own  duty  in  using 
them,  —  when  such  a  man  is  beset  by  a  base  temptation, 
and  the  tempter  whispers,  —  "You  may  yield,  for,  in  this 
solitude  and  impenetrable  darkness,  none  can  ever 
know  your  momentary  lapse,"  —  his  indignant  reply  is, 
"  But  I  shall  know  it  myself!  "  Without  this  elevating 
and  sustaining  instinct,  existing  in  some  degree,  and 
acting  with  some  efficiency,  no  man  could  ever  hold  him- 
self erect,  in  the  midst  of  so  many  millions  of  other  men, 
each  by  the  law  of  nature  equal  to  himself.  Without 
this,  when  surveying  the  sublimities  of  creation,  —  the 
cataract,  the  mountain,  the  ocean,  the  awful  magnificence 
of  the  midnight  heavens  ;  or  when  contemplating  the 
power  and  perfections  of  Jehovah,  —  every  one  would 
lay  his  hand  on  his  mouth  and  his  mouth  in  the  dust, 
never  to  rise  again. 

But  this  common  propensity,  like  the  others,  is  capable 
of  infinite  excess.  There  are  no  bounds  to  its  expansive- 
ness  and  exorbitancy.  When  acting  with  intensity,  it 
seems  to  possess  creative  power.  It  changes  emptiness 
into  fulness.  It  not  only  reveals  to  its  possessor  a  self- 
worthiness  wholly  invisible  to  others,  but  it  so  overflows 
with  arrogance  and  pride  as  to  confer  an  excellence  upon 
every  thing  connected  with  or  pertaining  to  itself.  The 
tyrant  Gessler  mounted  his  cap  upon  a  pole,  and  com- 


IN   A    REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  101 

manded  his  subjects  to  pay  homage  to  it.  It  had  imbibed 
a  virtue  from  contact  with  his  head,  which  made  it  of 
greater  value  than  a  nation  of  freemen.  It  is  said  of  one 
of  the  present  British  dukes,  that  he  will  give  a  thousand 
pounds  sterling  for  a  single  worthless  book,  or  for  some 
ancient  marble  or  pebble,  provided  it  is  known  to  be  the 
only  one  of  the  kind  in  existence,  —  a  unique,  —  so  that 
his  pride  can  blow  its  trumpet  in  the  ears  of  all  man- 
kind, and  say,  "  In  respect  of  this  old  book,  or  marble,  or 
pebble,  I  have  what  no  other  man  has,  and  am  superior 
to  the  rest  of  the  world.  "  Constable  was  so  inflated 
with  the  supposed  honor  of  being  the  publisher  of  Sir 
Walter  Scott's  novels,  that,  in  one  of  his  paroxysms  of 
pride,  he  exclaimed  with  an  oath,  "  I  am  all  but  the 
author  of  the  Waverley  novels  !  "  Yes,  he  came  as  near 
as  type-setter  !  It  is  this  feeling  which  makes  the  organ- 
blower  appropriate  the  plaudits  bestowed  upon  the  musi- 
cian, and  the  hero's  valet  mistake  himself  for  his  master. 
It  is  this  propensity  that  makes  a  man  proud  of  his 
ancestors,  who  were  dead  centuries  before  he  was  born  ; 
—  proud  of  garments  which  he  never  had  wit  enough  to 
make,  while  he  despises  the  tailor  by  whose  superior  skill 
they  were  prepared  ;  —  and  proud  of  owning  a  horse 
that  can  trot  a  mile  in  three  minutes,  though  the  credit 
of  his  speed  belongs  to  the  farmer  who  reared,  and  the 
jockey  who  trained,  and  even  to  the  hostler  who  grooms 
him,  infinitely  more  than  to  the  self-supposed  gentleman 
who  sits  behind  him  in  a  gig,  and  just  lets  him  go ! 
Other  selfish  propensities  play  the  strangest  tricks,  delu- 
sions, impostures,  upon  us,  and  make  us  knaves  and  fools; 
but  it  is  the  inflation  of  pride,  more  than  any  thing  else, 
that  swells  us  into  an  Infinite  Sham. 

I  have  time  to  mention  but  one  more  of  this"  lower  or- 
der of  the  human  faculties,  —  the  Love  of  Approbation. 

VOL.  I.  11 


162  NECESSITY   OF  EDUCATION 

As  a  proper  self-respect  makes  us  discard  and  disdain  all 
unworthy  conduct,  even  when  alone ;  so  a  rational  desire 
to  obtain  the  good-will  of  others  stimulates  us  to  gene- 
rosity, and  magnanimity,  and  fortitude,  in  the  perform- 
ance of  our  social  duties.  It  is  a  strong  auxiliary  motive, 
—  useful  as  an  impulse,  though  fatal  as  a  guide.  I  think 
it  is  by  the  common  consent  of  mankind,  that  the  plau- 
dits of  the  world  rank  as  the  third,  in  the  list  of  rewards 
for  virtuous  conduct,  —  coming  next  after  the  smiles  of 
Heaven  and  the  approval  of  conscience.  In  this  country, 
the  bestowment  of  offices  is  the  current  coin  in  which  the 
love  of  approbation  pays  and  receives  its  debts.  Offices, 
in  the  United  States,  seem  to  be  a  legal  tender,  for  no- 
body refuses  them.  But  if  this  desire  becomes  rabid  and 
inappeasable,  if  it  grows  from  a  subordinate  instinct  into 
a  domineering  and  tyrannical  passion,  it  reverses  the 
moral  order,  and  places  the  applauses  of  men  before  the 
rewards  of  conscience  and  the  approval  of  Heaven.  The 
victim  of  this  usurper-passion  will  find  the  doctrines  of 
revealed  truth  in  the  prevalent  opinions  of  the  commu- 
nity where  he  resides  ;  and  the  doctrines  of  political  truth 
in  the  majority  of  votes  at  the  last  election,  —  modified 
by  the  chances  of  a  change  before  the  next.  Under  its 
influence,  the  intellect  will  plot  any  fraud,  and  the  tongue 
will  utter  any  falsehood,  in  order  to  cajole  and  invei- 
gle a  majority  of  the  people  ;  but  should  that  majority 
fail,  it  will  compel  its  poor  slave  to  abandon  the  old  party, 
and  try  its  fortunes  with  a  new  one. 

There  are  other  original,  innate  propensities,  which  can- 
not properly  be  discussed  on  an  occasion  like  this.  Their 
action,  within  certain  limits,  is  necessary  to  self-preserva- 
tion, and  to  the  preservation  of  the  race ;  a  description 
of  their  excesses  would  make  every  cheek  pale  and  every 
heart  faint. 


IN   A   REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  163 

Now  there  are  a  few  general  truths  appertaining  to  this 
whole  tribe  of  propensities.  Though  existing  with  differ- 
ent degrees  of  strength,  in  different  individuals,  yet 
they  are  common  to  the  whole  race.  As  they  are  neces- 
sary to  self-preservation,  their  bestowment  is  almost  uni- 
versal, and  we  regard  every  man  as  so  far  unnatural,  and 
suffering  privation,  who  has  not  the  elements  of  them  all, 
mingled  in  his  composition.  As  they  are  necessary  to  the 
continuance  of  the  race,  we  must  suppose,  at  least  during 
the  present  constitution  of  human  nature,  that  they  will 
always  exist ;  and  that  all  improvements  in  government, 
science,  morals,  faith,  and  other  constituents  of  civiliza- 
tion, will  produce  their  blessed  effects,  not  by  extirpating, 
but  by  controlling  them,  and  by  bringing  them  into  sub- 
jection to  the  social  and  the  divine  law.  As  we  have  a 
moral  nature  to  which  God  speaks,  commanding  us  to 
love  and  obey  his  holy  will ;  as  we  have  a  social  nature, 
which  sends  a  circulating  current  of  sympathy  from  our 
hearts  around  through  the  hearts  of  children,  friends, 
kindred  and  kind,  mingling  our  pleasures  and  pains  and 
their  pleasures  and  pains  in  one  common  stream  ;  so,  by 
these  propensities,  we  are  jointed  into  this  earthly  life, 
and  this  frame  of  material  things. 

Again  ;  each  one  of  these  propensities  is  related  to  the 
whole  of  its  class  of  objects,  and  not  to  any  proportionate 
or  definite  quantity  of  them ;  — just  as  the  appetite  of  a 
wolf  or  a  vulture  is  adapted  or  related  to  the  blood  of  all 
lambs  and  all  kids,  and  not  merely  to  the  blood  of  some 
particular  number  of  lambs  and  kids.  Each  one  of  them, 
also,  is  blind  to  every  thing  but  its  own  gratification  ;  it 
sallies  forth,  —  if  uncontrolled,  —  and  seizes  and  riots 
upon  its  objects,  regardless  of  all  sacrifices,  and  defiant 
of  all  consequences.  Each  one  of  them  is  capacious  as 
an  abyss,  is  insatiable  by  indulgence,  would  consume 


164  NECESSITY   OF   EDUCATION 

whatever  lias  been  created  for  all,  and  then  task  Omnipo- 
tence to  invent  new  pleasures  for  its  pampering.  Was 
any  royal  epicure  ever  satisfied,  while  a  luxury  was 
known  to  exist  which  he  had  not  tasted  ?  To  rear  an  ar- 
chitectural pile,  or  a  mausoleum,  vast  as  the  unrestrained 
desires  of  man,  the  cedars  of  Lebanon  would  be  too  few  ; 
nor  cotild  the  materials  of  his  wardrobe  be  supplied, 
though  Damascus  were  his  merchant.  There  have  been 
thousands  of  men,  all  whose  coffers  were  literally  filled 
with  gold  ;  but  where  the  avaricious  man  in  whose  heart 
there  was  not  room  for  more  coffers  ?  The  experiment 
was  tried  with  Alexander  of  Macedon,  whether  the  love 
of  power  could  be  satisfied  by  the  conquest  of  all  the  na- 
tions of  the  earth.  He  did  not  weep,  at  first,  for  the 
conquest  of  the  world  ;  it  was  only  after  conquering  one 
world  that  he  wept  for  the  conquest  of  more.  The  ambition 
of  Napoleon  never  burned  with  a  fiercer  flame  than  when 
he  escaped  from  his  island-prison  to  remount  the  throne 
of  France  ;  although  it  is  said  that  the  wars  in  which  he 
had  then  been  engaged  had  cost  Europe  five  millions  of 
human  lives.  But  to  slake  his  thirst  for  power  and  fame, 
the  blood  of  five  millions  or  of  five  hundred  millions,  the 
destruction  of  a  continent  or  a  constellation,  of  zone  or 
zodiac,  would  have  been  nothing. 

And  thus  it  is  with  all  the  propensities.  Their  object 
must  be  obtained,  whether,  like  Richard,  they  murder  two 
male  children,  or,  like  Herod,  all  under  two  years  of  age. 
Pride  built  the  pyramids  and  the  Mexican  mounds.  Ap- 
petite led  down  the  Goths  and  Vandals  into  the  delicious 
South.  Cupidity  brought  forth  the  slave-trade.  And  so 
of  other  enormities,  —  the  Bastille,  the  Inquisition,  the 
Harem,  —  they  grew  on  the  same  stock.  And  though 
our  bodies  seem  so  small,  and  occupy  so  little  space,  yet, 
through  these  propensities,  they  are  capable  of  sending 


IN   A    REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  165 

out    earth-o'erspreading    branches,   all    clustering  with 
abominations. 

Our  propensities  have  no  affinity  with  reason  or  con- 
science. Did  you  ever  hear  two  persons  conversing  about 
a  third,  whose  ruin  and  infamy  they  agreed  had  come 
from  the  amount  of  his  fortune,  or  from  his  facilities  for 
indulgence,  when,  in  the  very  breath  in  which  they  spoke 
of  the  resistless  power  of  the  temptation  over  him,  they 
did  not  add  that,  in  their  own  persons,  they  should  be 
willing  to  run  the  same  risk  ?  This  is  the  language  of 
all  the  propensities.  They  are  willing  to  run  any  risk, 
whether  it  be  of  health  or  of  character,  of  time  or  of 
eternity.  This  explains  how  it  is,  that  some  men  not 
wholly  lost  to  virtue,  —  men  who  acknowledge  their  re- 
sponsibleness  to  God,  and  their  obligations  to  conscience, 
—  but  in  whom  the  propensities  predominate  and  tyran- 
nize ;  —  I  say  this  explains  how  it  is  that  such  men,  when 
stung  and  maddened  by  the  goadings  of  desire,  wish  them- 
selves bereft  of  their  better  attributes,  that  they  might 
give  full  career  to  passion,  without  remorse  of  conscience 
or  dread  of  retribution.  That  human  depravity,  which, 
hitherto,  has  made  the  history  of  our  race,  like  the  roll 
of  the  prophet,  a  record  of  lamentation  and  mourning 
and  woe,  has  worked  out  through  these  propensities  ;  and, 
if  the  very  substance  and  organization  of  human  nature 
be  not  changed,  by  the  eradication  of  these  instincts,  that 
depravity  which  is,  to  a  greater  or  less  degree,  to  make 
the  future  resemble  the  past,  will  pour  out  its  agonies 
and  its  atrocities  though  the  same  channels  ! 

Such,  then,  are  our  latent  capabilities  of  evil,  —  all 
ready  to  be  evolved,  should  the  restraints  of  reason,  con- 
science, religion,  be  removed.  Here  are  millions  of  men, 
each  with  appetites  capacious  of  infinity,  and  raging  to 
be  satisfied  out  of  a  supply  of  means  too  scanty  for  any 


166  NECESSITY   OP   EDUCATION 

one  of  them.  Millions  of  coveting  eyes  are  fastened  on 
the  same  object,  —  millions  of  hands  thrust  out  to  seize 
it.  What  ravening,  torturing,  destroying,  then,  must 
ensue,  if  these  hounds  cannot  be  lashed  back  into  their 
kennel !  They  must  be  governed  ;  they  cannot  be  de- 
stroyed. Nature  declares  that  the  germs,  the  embryos,  of 
these  incipient  monsters,  shall  not  be  annihilated.  She 
reproduces  them  with  every  human  being  that  comes  into 
the  world.  Nor,  indeed,  is  it  desirable,  even  if  it  were 
practicable,  that  they  should  be  wholly  expunged  and 
razed  out  of  our  constitution.  He  who  made  us,  knew  our 
circumstances  and  necessities,  and  He  has  implanted 
them  in  our  nature  too  deep  for  eradication.  Besides, 
within  their  proper  sphere,  they  confer  an  innocent, 
though  a  subordinate  enjoyment.  Certainly,  we  would 
not  make  all  men  hermits  and  anchorites.  Let  us  be 
just,  even  to  the  appetites.  No  man  is  the  worse  because 
he  keenly  relishes  and  enjoys  the  bountiful  provisions 
which  Heaven  has  made  for  his  food,  his  raiment,  and  his 
shelter.  Indeed,  why  were  these  provisions  ever  made, 
if  they  are  not  to  be  enjoyed  ?  Surely  they  are  not  su- 
perfluities and  supernumeraries,  cumbering  a  creation 
which  would  have  been  more  perfect  without  them.  Let 
them  then  be  acquired  and  enjoyed,  though  always  with 
moderation  and  temperance.  Let  the  lover  of  wealth 
seek  wealth  by  all  honest  means,  and  with  earnestness,  if 
he  will ;  —  let  him  surround  himself  with  the  comforts 
and  the  embellishments  of  life,  and  add  the  pleasures  of 
beauty  to  the  pleasures  of  utility.  Let  every  honorable 
man  indulge  a  quick  and  sustaining  confidence  in  his  own 
worthiness,  whenever  disparaged  or  maligned  ;  and  let 
him  count  upon  the  affections  of  his  friends,  and  the 
benedictions  of  his  race,  as  a  part  of  the  solid  rewards  of 
virtue.  These, and  kindred  feelings,  are  not  to  be  crushed, 


IN   A   REPUBLICAN  GOVERNMENT.  167 

extinguished.  Let  them  rouse  themselves  in  presence 
of  their  objects,  and  rush  out  to  seize  them,  and  neigh, 
like  a  war-horse  for  the  battle, — only  let  them  know  that 
they  have  a  rider,  to  whose  eye  no  mist  can  dim  the  severe 
line  they  are  never  to  pass,  and  whose  arm  can  bend 
every  neck  of  them,  like  the  twig  of  an  osier. 

But  I  must  pass  to  the  next  topic  for  consideration,  — 
the  stimulus  which,  in  this  country,  is  applied  to  the  pro- 
pensities ;  and  the  free,  unbarred,  unbounded  career, 
which  is  here  opened  for  their  activity.  In  every  other 
nation  that  has  ever  existed,  —  not  even  excepting  Greece 
and  Rome,  —  the  mind  of  the  masses  has  been  obstructed 
in  its  development.  Amongst  millions  of  men,  only  some 
half-dozen  of  individuals,  —  often  only  a  single  individ- 
ual, —  have  been  able  to  pour  out  the  lava  of  their  pas- 
sions, with  full,  volcanic  force.  These  few  men  have 
made  the  Pharaohs,  the  Neros,  the  Napoleons  of  the  race. 
The  rest  have  usually  been  subjected  to  a  systematic 
course  of  blinding,  deafening,  crippling.  As  an  inevita- 
ble consequence  of  this,  the  minds  of  men  have  never 
yet  put  forth  one-thousandth  part  of  their  tremendous 
energies.  Bad  men  have  swarmed  upon  the  earth,  it  is 
true,  but  they  have  been  weak  men.  Another  consequence 
is,  that  we,  by  deriving  our  impressions  from  history, 
have  formed  too  low  an  estimate  of  the  marvellous  powers 
and  capacities  of  the  human  being  for  evil  as  well  as  for 
good.  The  general  estimate  is  altogether  inadequate  to 
what  the  common  mind  will  be  able  to  effect,  when  apt 
instruments  are  put  into  its  hands,  and  the  wide  world  is 
opened  for  its  sphere  of  operations.  Amongst  savage  na- 
tions, it  is  true,  the  will  has  been  more  free  ;  but  there  it 
has  had  none  of  the  instruments  of  civilized  life,  where- 
with to  execute  its  purposes  —  such,  for  instance,  as  the 


168  NECESSITY   OF  EDUCATION 

mechanic  arts  ;  a  highly  cultivated  language,  with  the 
general  ability  to  read  and  write  it :  fire-arms  ;  engineer- 
ing; steam;  the  press,  and  the  post-office ; — and  among 
civilized  nations,  though  the  means  have  been  far  more, 
ample,  yet  the  will  has  been  broken  or  corrupted.  Even 
the  last  generation  in  this  country,  —  the  generation  that 
moulded  our  institutions  into  their  present  form,  —  were 
born  and  educated  under  other  institutions,  and  they 
brought  into  active  life  strong  hereditary  and  traditional 
feelings  of  respect  for  established  authority,  merely  be- 
cause it  was  established,  —  of  veneration  for  law,  simply 
because  it  was  law,  —  and  of  deference  both  to  secular  and 
ecclesiastical  rank,  because  they  had  been  accustomed  to 
revere  rank.  But  scarcely  any  vestige  of  this  reverence 
for  the  past  now  remains.  The  momentum  of  heredi- 
tary opinion  is  spent.  The  generation  of  men  now  enter- 
ing upon  the  stage  of  life,  —  the  generation  which  is  to 
occupy  that  stage  for  the  next  forty  years,  —  will  act  out 
their  desires  more  fully,  more  effectively,  than  any  gene- 
ration of  men  that  has  ever  existed.  Already,  the  tramp 
of  this  innumerable  host  is  sounding  in  our  ears.  They 
are  the  men  who  will  take  counsel  of  their  desires,  and 
make  it  law.  The  condition  of  society  is  to  be  only  an 
embodiment  of  their  mighty  will  ;  and  if  greater  care  be 
not  taken  than  has  ever  heretofore  been  taken,  to  inform 
and  regulate  that  will,  it  will  inscribe  its  laws  all  over  the 
face  of  society  in  such  broad  and  terrific  characters,  that, 
not  only  whoever  runs  may  read,  but  whoever  reads  will 
run.  Should  avarice  and  pride  obtain  the  mastery,  then 
will  the  humble  and  the  poor  be  ground  to  dust  beneath 
their  chariot-wheels  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  should  be- 
sotting vices  and  false  knowledge  bear  sway,  then  will 
every  wealthy,  and  every  educated,  and  every  refined  in- 
dividual and  family,  stand  in  the  same  relation  to  society, 
in  which  game  stands  to  the  sportsman  1 


IN   A   REPUBLICAN    GOVERNMENT.  169 

111  taking  a  survey  of  the  race,  we  see  that  all  of  human 
character  and  conduct  may  be  referred  to  two  forces  ;  the 
innate  force  of  the  mind  acting  outwards,  and  the  force  of 
outward  things  acting  upon  the  mind.  First,  there  is  an 
internal,  salient,  elancing  vigor  of  the  mind,  which,  ac- 
cording to  its  state  and  condition,  originates  thoughts, 
desires,  impulses,  and  projects  them  outwards  into  words 
and  deeds  ;  and  secondly,  there  is  the  external  force  of 
circumstances,  laws,  traditions,  customs,  which  besieges 
the  mind,  environs  it,  places  a  guard  at  all  its  outer  gates, 
permits  some  of  its  desires  and  thoughts  to  issue  forth, 
and  to  become  words  and  actions,  but  forbids  others  to  es- 
cape, beats  them  back,  seals  the  lips  that  would  utter 
them,  smites  off  the  arm  that  would  perform  them,  pun- 
ishes the  soul  that  would  send  them  forth  by  finding  an 
avenue  in  every  sense  arid  in  every  nerve,  through  which 
to  send  up  tormentors  to  destroy  its  hopes  and  lay  waste 
its  sanctuaries  ;  and  finally,  if  all  these  means  fail  to  sub- 
due and  silence  the  internal  energy,  then  the  external 
power  dismisses  the  soul  itself  from  the  earth,  by  crushing 
the  physical  organization  which  it  inhabits.  These  two 
forces,  —  on  the  one  hand,  the  mind  trajecting  itself 
forth,  and  seeking  to  do  its  will  on  whatever  is  external 
to  itself,  —  and,  on  the  other  hand,  whatever  is  external 
to  the  mind,  modifying  or  resisting  its  movements,  — 
these  constitute  the  main  action  of  the  human  drama. 
As  a  mathematician  would  express  it,  human  conduct  and 
character  move  in  the  diagonal  of  these  two  forces. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  both  forces  are  coincident,  sometimes 
antagonistic  ;  but  it  is  useless  to  inquire  which  force  has 
predominated,  as  no  universal  rule  can  be  laid  down  re- 
specting them.  In  despotisms,  the  external  prevails  ;  in 
revolutions,  —  such  as  the  French,  for  instance,  —  the 
internal.  Why  are  the  Chinese,  for  a  hundred  succes- 


170  NECESSITY   OF   EDUCATION 

sive  generations,  transcripts  and  fac-similes  of  each  other, 
as  though  the  dead  grandparent  had  come  back  again  in 
the  grandchild,  and  so  round  and  round  ?  It  is  because, 
among  the  Chinese,  this  external  force  overlays  the  grow- 
ing faculties  of  the  soul,  and  compels  them,  as  they  grow, 
to  assume  a  prescribed  shape.  In  that  country  the  laws 
and  customs  are  so  inflexible,  and  the  spirit  of  the  people 
is  so  impotent,  that  their  minds  grow,  as  it  were,  into  the 
hollow  of  a  brazen  envelope,  whose  walls  are  not  remova- 
ble nor  penetrable  ;  and  hence,  all  growth  must  conform 
to  the  shape  and  size  of  the  concave  surface.  By  their 
education,  laws,  and  penalties,  the  minds  of  the  people 
ara  made  to  grow  into  certain  social,  political,  and  reli- 
gious forms,  just  as  certainly,  and  on  the  same  principle  of 
force,  as  the  feet  of  their  beauties  are  made,  by  small,  in- 
olastic  shoes,  to  grow  hoof-wise.  In  Russian  Poland,  a 
subject  is  as  much  debarred  from  touching  certain  topics, 
in  the  way  of  discussion,  as  from  seizing  on  the  jewels  of 
the  crown.  The  knout  and  the  Siberian  mines  await  the 
first  outward  expression  of  the  transgressor.  Hence  the 
divinely-formed  soul,  created  to  admire,  through  intelli- 
gence, this  glorious  universe;  to  go  forth,  through  knowl- 
edge, into  all  lands  and  times  ;  to  be  identified,  through 
sympathy,  with  all  human  fortunes  :  to  know  its  Maker, 
and  its  immortal  destiny,  is  driven  back  at  every  door  of 
egress,  is  darkened  at  every  window  where  light  could  en- 
ter, and  is  chained  to  the  vassal  spot  which  gave  it  birth, 
—  where  the  very  earth,  as  well  as  its  inhabitant,  is  blast- 
ed by  the  common  curse  of  bondage.  In  Oriental  and 
African  despotisms,  the  mind  of  the  millions  grows,  only 
as  the  trees  of  a  noble  forest  could  grow  in  the  rocky 
depths  of  a  cavern,  without  strength,  or  beauty,  or  heal- 
ing balm,  —  in  impurity  and  darkness,  fed  by  poisonous 
exhalations  from  stagnant  pools,  all  upward  and  outward 


IN  A   REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  171 

expansion  introverted  by  solid  barriers,  and  forced  back 
into  unsightly  forms.  Thus  has  it  always  fared  with  the 
faculties  of  the  human  soul  when  caverned  in  despotism. 
They  have  dwelt  in  intellectual,  denser  than  subterra- 
nean, darkness.  Their  most  tender,  sweet,  and  hallowed 
emotions  have  been  choked  and  blighted.  The  pure  and 
sacred  effusions  of  the  heart  have  been  converted  into 
hatred  of  the  good  and  idolatry  of  the  base,  for  want  of 
the  light  and  the  air  of  true  freedom  arid  instruction. 
The  world  can  suffer  no  loss  equal  to  that  spiritual  loss 
which  is  occasioned  by  attempting  to  destroy,  instead  of 
regulating,  the  energies  of  the  mind. 

Since  the  Christian  epoch,  great  has  been  the  change 
in  Christian  countries  between  the  relative  strength  of 
the  mind,  acting  outwards,  and  the  strength  of  outward 
things,  repulsing  and  stifling  the  action  of  the  mind. 
Christianity  established  one  conviction  in  the  minds  of 
thousands  and  tens  of  thousands,  which  other  religions 
had  established  in  the  mind  of  here  and  there  an  individ- 
ual only.  This  conviction  was,  that  the  future  existence 
is  infinitely  more  important  than  the  present ;  —  the  dif- 
ference between  the  two  being  so  great  as  to  reduce  all 
mere  worldly  distinctions  to  insignificance  and  nothing. 
Hence  it  might  have  been  predicted  from  the  beginning, 
that  the  human  mind,  acting  under  the  mighty  stimulus 
of  Christianity,  would  eventually  triumph  over  despotism. 
The  interests  of  despotism  lie  in  this  life  ;  those  of  Chris- 
tianity, not  only  in  this,  but  in  the  life  to  come.  It  was, 
therefore,  mortality  at  one  end  of  the  lever,  and  immor- 
tality at  the  other.  When  one  party  contends  for  the 
1  Blessings  of  life  merely,  while  the  other  contends  for  bless- 
ings higher  than  life,  the  latter,  by  a  law  of  the  moral 
nature,  must  ultimately  prevail. 

Although  many  of  the  ancients  had  a  belief  in  a  fu- 


172  NECESSITY   OF   EDUCATION 

ture  state  of  existence,  yet  it  was  apprehended  by  them 
so  dimly,  and  its  retributions  were  pressed  home  so  feebly 
on  their  consciences,  that  the  belief  appears  to  have  had 
but  little  effect  upon  the  conduct  of  individuals,  or  the 
administration  and  policy  of  states  ;  and,  for  all  practical 
purposes,  it  would  hardly  be  too  strong  an  expression  to 
say,  that  immortality  was  first  revealed  by  Christ.  Dur- 
ing the  first  three  centuries  of  our  era,  the  knowledge  of 
this  discovery,  —  so  to  call  it,  —  was  widely  diffused 
among  men.  Then,  by  the  union  of  Church  and  State, 
under  Constantino,  the  civil  power  came  in,  and  attemptr 
ed  to  appropriate  the  benefits  of  the  new  discovery  to 
itself,  so  that  it  might  use  divine  motives  for  selfish  pur- 
poses. And,  had  the  throne  and  the  priesthood  sought  to 
govern  men  by  the  motive  of  fear  alone,  they  might  have 
retained  their  ascendency,  —  we  cannot  tell  for  what  pe- 
riod of  time.  But  they  found  a  natural  conscience  in 
men,  a  sense  of  responsibleness  to  duty,  which  they  were 
so  short-sighted  as  to  enlist  in  their  service  ;  —  I  say, 
short-sighted,  for,  when  they  aroused  the  sentiment  of 
duty  in  the  human  soul,  and  used  it  as  a  means  of  secur- 
ing obedience  to  themselves,  they  called  up  a  power 
stronger  than  themselves.  The  ally  was  mightier  than 
the  chief  that  invoked  its  aid.  Hence  the  uprisings,  the 
rebellions  of  the  people  against  regal  and  ecclesiastical 
oppression.  Rulers  attempted  to  subdue  the  people,  by 
persecutions,  massacres,  burnings,  but  in  vain  ;  becaiise, 
though  they  could  kill  men,  they  could  not  kill  conscience. 
After  a  conflict  of  sixteen  centuries,  the  victory  has 
been  achieved.  Mind  has  triumphed  over  the  quellers  of 
mind,  —  the  internal  force  over  the  external.  When 
mankind  shall  be  removed  by  time  to  such  a  distance  that 
they  can  see  past  events  in  their  true  proportions  and  rel- 
ative magnitude,  this  struggle  between  oppression  on  the 


IN   A    REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  173 

one  side,  striving  to  keep  the  human  mind  in  its  prison- 
house,  and  to  set  an  eternal  seal  upon  the  door  ;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  convulsive  efforts  of  that  mind  to  dis- 
inthrall  itself,  and  to  utter  its  impatient  thoughts  ;  and  to 
form,  and  to  abide  by,  its  own  convictions  of  truth,  — 
this  conflict,  I  say,  will  be  the  grand,  central,  conspicuous 
object,  in  the  history  of  our  era.  The  history  of  wars 
between  rival  dynasties,  for  the  conquest  or  dismember- 
ment of  empires,  will  fade  away,  and  be  but  dimly  visible 
in  the  retrospect ;  while  this  struggle  between  the  soul 
and  its  enslavers  will  stand  far  out  in  the  foreground,  — 
the  towering,  supereminent  figure  on  the  historic  can- 
vas. 

It  has  not  been  in  accustomed  modes,  nor  with  weapons 
of  earthly  temper  only,  that  this  warfare  has  been  waged. 
As  the  energies  of  the  soul,  acting  under  the  mighty  im- 
pulses of  a  sense  of  duty  and  the  prospect  of  an  endless 
futurity,  waxed  stronger  and  stronger,  tyrants  forged  new 
engines  to  subdue  it.  Their  instruments  have  been  the 
dungeons  of  a  thousand  Bastilles  ;  the  Inquisition,  whose 
ministers  were  literally  flames  of  fire ;  devastations  of 
whole  provinces  ;  huntings  of  entire  communities  of  men 
into  the  mountains,  like  timorous  flocks;  massacres, —  in 
one  only  of  which,  thirty  thousand  men  and  women  were 
slaughtered  at  the  ringing  of  a  signal-bell ;  and,  after 
exhausting  all  the  agonies  of  earth  and  time,  they  un- 
vaulted  the  Bottomless  Pit,  and,  suspending  their  victims 
over  the  abyss,  they  threatened  to  hurl  them  down  into  the 
arms  of  beckoning  demons,  impatient  to  begin  their  pas- 
time of  eternal  torture.  But,  impassive  to  annihilation  ; 
though  smitten  down,  yet,  witli  recuperative  energy, 
springing  from  its  fall ;  victorious  over  the  sufferings  of 
this  world  and  the  more  formidable  terrors  of  another,  — 
the  human  soul,  immortal,  invulnerable,  invincible,  has 


174  NECESSITY   OP   EDUCATION 

at  last  unmanacled  and  emancipated  itself.  It  has  tri- 
umphed ;  and  here,  in  our  age  and  in  our  land,  it  is  now 
rising-  up  before  us,  gigantic,  majestical,  lofty  as  an  arch- 
angel, and,  like  an  archangel,  to  be  saved  or  lost  by  its 
obedience  or  its  transgressions.  Amongst  ourselves  it  is, 
that  this  spirit  is  now  walking  forth,  full  of  its  new-found 
life1,  wantoning  in  freshly-discovered  energies,  surrounded 
by  all  the  objects  which  can  inflame  its  boundless  appe- 
tites, and,  as  yet,  too  purblind,  from  the  long  darkness  of 
its  prison-house,  to  discern  clearly  between  its  blessing 
and  its  bane.  That  unconquerable  force  of  the  human 
soul,  which  all  the  arts  and  power  of  despotism,  —  which 
all  the  enginery  borrowed  from  both  worlds,  —  could  not 
subdue,  is  here,  amongst  ourselves,  to  do  its  sovereign 
will. 

Let  us  now  turn  for  a  moment  to  see  what  means  and 
stimulants  our  institutions  have  provided  for  the  use  of 
the  mighty  powers  and  passions  they  have  unloosed.  No 
apparatus  so  skilful  was  ever  before  devised.  Instead  of 
the  slow  and  cumbrous  machinery  of  former  times,  we 
have  provided  that  which  is  quick-working  and  far-reach- 
ing, and  which  may  be  used  for  the  destruction  as 
easily  as  for  the  welfare  of  its  possessors.  Our  institu- 
tions furnish  as  great  facilities  for  wicked  men,  in  all 
departments  of  wickedness,  as  phosphorus  and  lucifer 
matches  furnish  to  the  incendiary.  What  chemistry  has 
done,  in  these  preparations,  over  the  old  art  of  rubbing- 
two  sticks  together,  for  the  wretch  who  would  fire  your 
dwelling,  our  social  partnerships  have  done  for  flagitious 
and  unprincipled  men.  Through  the  right,  —  almost 
universal,  —  of  suffrage,  we  have  established  a  commu- 
nity of  power ;  and  no  proposition  is  more  plain  and  self- 
evident,  than  that  nothing  but  mere  popular  inclination 


IN  A  REPUBLICAN  GOVERNMENT.         175 

lies  between  a  community  of  power  and  a  community  in 
every  thing  else.  And  though,  in  the  long-run,  and  when 
other  things  are  equal,  a  righteous  cause  always  has  a 
decisive  advantage  over  an  evil  one,  yet,  in  the  first  onset 
between  right  and  wrong,  bad  men  possess  one  advantage 
over  the  good.  They  have  double  resources, — two 
armories.  The  arts  of  guilt  are  as  welcome  to  them  as 
the  practices  of  justice.  They  can  use  poisoned  weapons 
as  well  as  those  approved  by  the  usages  of  war. 

Again  ;  has  it  been  sufficiently  considered,  that  all 
which  has  been  said,  —  and  truly  said,  —  of  the  excel- 
lence of  our  institutions,  if  administered  by  an  upright 
people,  must  be  reversed  and  read  backwards,  if  adminis- 
tered by  a  corrupt  one  ?  I  am  aware  that  some  will  be 
.ready  to  say,  "  We  have  been  unwise  and  infatuated  to 
confide  all  the  constituents  of  our  social  and  political 
welfare  to  such  irresponsible  keeping."  But  let  me  ask 
of  such,  —  of  what  avail  is  their  lamentation  ?  The  ir- 
resistible movement  in  the  diffusion  of  power  is  still  pro- 
gressive, not  retrograde.  Every  year  puts  more  of  social 
strength  into  the  hands  of  physical  strength.  The  arith- 
metic of  numbers  is  more  and  more  excluding  all  estimate 
of  moral  forces,  in  the  administration  of  government. 
And  this,  whether  for  good  or  for  evil,  will  continue  to 
be.  Human  beings  cannot  be  remanded  to  the  dungeons 
of  imbecility,  if  they  are  to  those  of  ignorance.  The  sun 
can  as  easily  be  turned  backwards  in  its  course,  as  one 
particle  of  that  power,  which  has  been  conferred  upon  the 
millions,  can  be  again  monopolized  by  the  few.  To  dis- 
cuss the  question,  therefore,  whether  our  institutions  are 
not  too  free,  is,  for  all  practical  purposes,  as  vain  as  it 
would  be  to  discuss  the  question  whether,  on  the  whole, 
it  was  a  wise  arrangement  on  the  part  of  Divine  Provi- 
dence, that  the  American  continent  should  ever  have 


176  NECESSITY   OF   EDUCATION 

been  created,  or  that  Columbus  should  have  discovered  it. 
And  let  me  ask,  further,  have  those  who  believe  our  insti- 
tutions to  be  too  free,  and  who,  therefore,  would  go  back 
to  less  liberal  ones,  —  have  they  settled  the  question,  how 
far  back  they  will  go  ?  Will  they  go  back  to  the  dark 
ages,  and  recall  an  eclipse  which  lasted  centuries  long  ? 
or  will  they  ascend  a  little  higher  for  their  models,  —  to 
a  time  when  our  ancestors  wore  undressed  skins,  and 
burrowed  in  holes  of  the  earth  ?  or  will  they  strike  at 
once  for  the  institutions  of  Egypt,  where,  though  the 
monkey  was  a  god,  there  was  still  a  sufficient  distance 
between  him  and  his  human  worshipper  ?  But  all  such 
discussions  are  vain.  The  oak  will  as  soon  go  back  into 
the  acorn,  or  the  bird  into  its  shell,  as  we  return  to  the 
monarchical  or  aristocratic  forms  of  by-gone  ages. 

Nor  let  it  be  forgotten,  in  contemplating  our  condition, 
that  the  human  passions,  as  unfolded  and  invigorated  by 
our  institutions,  are  not  only  possessed  of  all  the  preroga- 
tives, and  equipped  with  all  the  implements  of  sover- 
eignty ;  but  that  they  are  forever  roused  and  spurred  to 
the  most  vehement  efforts.  It  is  a  law  of  the  passions, 
that  they  exert  strength  in  proportion  to  the  causes  which 
excite  them,  —  a  law  which  holds  true  in  cases  of  sanity, 
as  well  as  in  the  terrible  strength  of  insanity.  And  with 
what  endless  excitements  are  the  passions  of  men  here 
plied  !  With  us,  the  Press  is  such  a  clarion,  that  it  pro- 
claims all  the  great  movements  of  this  great  country,  with 
a  voice  that  sweeps  over  its  whole  surface,  and  comes 
back  to  us  in  echoes  from  its  extremest  borders.  From 
the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  from  the  Lakes  to  the  Gulf, 
men  cheer,  inflame,  exasperate  each  other,  as  though 
they  were  neighbors  in  .the  same  street.  What  the  ear 
of  Dionysius  was  to  him,  making  report  of  every  word 
uttered  by  friend  or  foe,  our  institutions  have  made  this 


IN  A   REPUBLICAN  GOVERNMENT.  177 

land  to  every  citizen.  It  is  a  vast  sounding  gallery  ; 
and  from  horizon  to  horizon  every  shout  of  triumph  and 
every  cry  of  alarm  are  gathered  up  and  rung  in  every 
man's  dwelling.  All  objects  which  stimulate  the  passions 
of  men  are  made  to  pass  before  the  eyes  of  all,  as  in  a 
circling  panorama.  In  very  truth  we  are  all  hung  upon 
the  same  electrical  wire,  and  if  the  ignorant  and  vicious 
get  possession  of  the  apparatus,  the  intelligent  and  the 
virtuous  must  take  such  shocks  as  the  stupid  or  profligate 
experimenters  may  choose  to  administer. 

Mark  how  the  excitements  which  our  institutions  sup- 
ply have  wrought  upon  the  love  of  gain  and  the  love  of 
place.  Vast  speculations,  —  such  as  in  other  countries 
would  require  not  only  royal  sanctions  and  charters,  but 
the  equipment  of  fleets,  and  princely  outfits  of  gold  and 
arms,  —  are  here  rushed  into,  on  flash  paper,  by  clerks 
and  apprentices,  not  out  of  their  time.  What  party  can 
affirm  that  it  is  exempt  from  members  who  prize  office, 
rather  than  the  excellence  that  deserves  it'?  Where  can 
I  be,  —  not  what  can  I  be,  —  is  the  question  suggested  to 
aspirants  for  fame.  How  many  have  their  eyes  fixed 
upon  posts  of  honor  and  emolument  which  but  one  only 
can  fill !  While  few  will  be  satisfied  with  occupying  less 
than  their  portion  of  space  in  the  public  eye,  thousands 
have  marked  out  some  great  compartment  of  the  sky  for 
the  blazonry  of  their  names.  And  hence  it  is,  that, 
wherever  there  is  a  signal  of  gain,  or  of  power,  the  vul- 
tures of  cupidity  and  of  ambition  darken  the  air.  Young 
men  launch  into  this  tumultuous  life,  years  earlier  than 
has  ever  been  witnessed  elsewhere.  They  seek  to  win 
those  prizes  without  delay,  which,  according  to  Nature's 
ordinances  and  appointments,  are  the  rewards  of  a  life 
of  labor.  Hence  they  find  no  time  for  studying  the  eter- 
nal principles  of  justice,  veracity,  equality,  benevolence, 

VOL.  i.  is 


178  NECESSITY   OF  EDUCATION 

and  for  applying  them  to  the  complicated  affairs  of  men. 
What  cares  a  young  adventurer  for  the  immutable  laws 
of  trade,  when  he  has  purchased  a  ticket  in  some  lottery 
of  speculation,  from  which  he  expects  to  draw  a  fortune-? 
Out  of  such  an  unbridled,  unchastened  love  of  gain, 
whether  it  traffics  in  townships  of  land  or  in  twopenny 
toys,  do  we  not  know  beforehand,  there  will  come  infinite 
falsehoods,  knavery  and  bankruptcy  ?  Let  this  state  of 
things  continue,  and  he  will  be  a  happy  man  who  dares 
to  say  of  any  article  of  food  or  of  apparel,  which  he  eats 
or  wears,  that  it  has  not,  at  some  period  of  its  prepara- 
tion, or  in  some  of  its  transfers,  been  contaminated  by 
fraud.  And  what  a  state  of  society  would  it  argue,  in 
other  respects,  if  the  people  at  large  should  ever  become 
indifferent  to  the  question,  whether  fraud  be,  or  be  not, 
inwoven  into  the  texture,  and  kneaded  into  the  substance 
of  what  they  daily  consume,  —  whether  what  they  eat  or 
drink  or  wear  be  not  an  embodiment  of  the  spirit  of  lies ! 
So  the  inordinate  love  of  office  will  present  the  specta- 
cle of  gladiatorial  contests,  —  of  men  struggling  for  sta- 
tion as  for  life,  and  using  against  each  other  the  poisonous 
weapons  of  calumny  and  vituperation  ;  —  while  the  abid- 
ing welfare,  the  true  greatness  and  prosperity  of  the 
people  will  be  like  the  soil  of  some  neutral  Flanders,  over 
which  the  hostile  bands  of  partisans  will  march  and  coun- 
termarch, and  convert  it  into  battle-fields,  —  so  that, 
whichever  side  may  triumph,  the  people  will  be  ruined. 
And  even  after  one  cause  or  one  party  has  prevailed,  the 
conquered  land  will  not  be  wide  enough  to  settle  a  tithe 
of  the  conquerors  upon.  Hence  must  come  new  ral- 
lyings  ;  new  banners  must  be  unfurled,  and  the  repose  of 
the  land  be  again  broken  by  the  convulsions  of  party 
strife.  Hence,  too,  the  death-grapple  between  the  defend- 
ers of  institutions  which  ought  to  be  abolished,  and  the 


IN   A    REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  179 

assailants  of  institutions  which  ought  to  be  preserved. 
Laocoon  cries,  "  My  life  and  my  children  are  mine." 
The  hissing  and  inwreathing  serpents  respond,  "  They 
are  ours."  If  eacli  party  espouses  and  supports  whatever 
is  wrong  on  its  own  side,  because  such  a  course  is  deemed 
necessary  to  union  and  strength ;  and  denounces  whatever 
is  right  in  the  plans  of  its  antagonists,  because  such  are 
the  approved  tactics  of  opposition  ;  if  each  party  sounds 
the  loudest  alarms,  when  the  most  trivial  danger  from  its 
opponents  is  apprehended,  and  sings  the  gentlest  lullabies 
over  perils  of  its  own  producing,  can  seer  or  prophet 
foretell  but  one  catastrophe  ? 

Again  ;  we  hear  good  men,  every  day,  bemoaning  the 
ignorance  of  certain  portions  of  our  country,  and  of  indi- 
viduals in  all  parts  of  it.  The  use  often  made  of  the 
elective  franchise,  the  crude,  unphilosophical  notions, 
sometimes  advanced  in  our  legislative  halls  on  questions 
of  political  economy,  the  erroneous  views  entertained  by 
portions  of  the  people,  respecting  the  relation  between 
representative  and  constituent,  and  the  revolutionary 
ideas  of  others  in  regard  to  the  structure  of  civil  society, 
—  these  are  cited  as  specimens  and  proofs  of  the  igno- 
rance that  abounds  amongst  us.  No  greater  delusion  can 
blind  us.  This  much-lamented  ignorance,  in  the  cases 
supposed,  is  a  phantom,  a  spectre.  The  outcry  against  it 
is  a  false  alarm,  diverting  attention  from  a  real  to  an 
imaginary  danger.  Ignorance  is  not  the  cause  of  the 
evils  referred  to.  With  exceptions  comparatively  few,  we 
have  but  two  classes  of  ignorant  persons  amongst  us,  and 
they  are  harmless.  Infants  and  idiots  are  ignorant ;  few 
others  are  so.  Those  whom  we  are  accustomed  to  call 
ignorant,  are  full  of  false  notions,  as  much  worse  than 
ignorance  as  wisdom  is  better.  A  merely  ignorant  man 
has  no  skill  in  adapting  means  to  ends,  whereby  to  jeop- 


180  NECESSITY   OP   EDUCATION 

ard  the  welfare  of  great  interests  or  great  numbers. 
Ignorance  is  blankness ;  or,  at  most,  a  lifeless,  inert  mass, 
which  can,  indeed,  be  moved  and  placed  where  you 
please,  but  will  stay  where  it  is  placed.  In  Europe,  there 
are  multitudes  of  ignorant  men,  —  men  into  whose  minds 
no  idea  ever  entered  respecting  the  duties  of  society  or 
of  government,  or  the  conditions  of  human  prosperity. 
They,  like  their  work-fellows,  the  cattle,  are  obedient  to 
their  masters  ;  and  the  range  of  their  ideas  on  political 
or  social  questions  is  hardly  more  extensive  than  that  of 
the  brutes.  But  with  our  institutions,  this  state  of  things, 
to  any  great  extent,  is  impossible.  The  very  atmosphere 
we  breathe  is  freighted  with  the  ideas  of  property,  of  ac- 
quisition and  transmission  ;  of  wages,  labor  and  capital ; 
of  political  and  social  rights  ;  of  the  appointment  to,  and 
tenure  of  offices ;  of  the  reciprocal  relations  between  the 
great  departments  of  government  —  executive,  legisla- 
tive, and  judicial.  Every  native-born  child  amongst  us 
imbibes  notions,  either  false  or  true,  on  these  subjects. 
Let  these  notions  be  false  ;  let  an  individual  grow  up, 
with  false  ideas  of  his  own  nature  and  destiny  as  an  im- 
mortal being,  with  false  views  respecting  what  govern- 
ment, laws,  customs,  should  be  ;  with  no  knowledge  of 
the  works  or  the  opinions  of  those  great  men  who  framed 
our  government,  and  adjusted  its  various  parts  to  each 
other  ;  —  and  when  such  an  individual  is  invested  with 
the  political  rights  of  citizenship,  with  power  to  give  an 
authoritative  voice  and  vote  upon  the  affairs  of  his  coun- 
try, he  will  look  upon  all  existing  things  as  rubbish  which 
it  is,  his  duty  to  sweep  away,  that  lie  may  have  room  for 
the  erection  of  other  structures,  planned  after  the  model 
of  his  own  false  ideas.  No  man  that  ever"  lived  could, 
by  mere  intuition  or  instinct,  form  just  opinions  upon  a 
thousand  questions,  pertaining  to  civil  society,  to  its  juris- 


IN   A   REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  181 

prudence,  its  local,  national  and  international  duties. 
Many  truths,  vital  to  the  welfare  of  the  people,  differ  in 
their  reality,  as  much  from  the  appearances  which  they 
present  to  uninstructed  minds,  as  the  apparent  size  of  the 
sun  differs  from  its  real  size,  which,  in  truth,  is  so  many 
thousand  times  larger  than  the  earth,  while  to  the  un- 
taught eye  it  appears  to  be  so  many  thousand  times 
smaller.  And  if  the  human  propensities  are  here  to 
manifest  themselves  through  the  enlarged  means  of  false 
knowledge  which  our  institutions,  unaided  by  special  in- 
struction, will  furnish  ;  if  they  are  to  possess  all  the  instru- 
ments and  furtherances  which  our  doctrine  of  political 
equality  confers  ;  then  the  result  must  be,  a  power  to  do 
evil  almost  infinitely  greater  than  ever  existed  before, 
instigated  by  impulses  proportionately  strong.  Hence 
our  dangers  are  to  be,  not  those  of  ignorance,  which 
would  be  comparatively  tolerable,  but  those  of  false  knowl- 
edge, which  transcend  the  powers  of  mortal  imagination 
to  portray.  Would  you  appreciate  the  amazing  difference 
between  ignorance  and  false  knowledge,  look  at  Prance, 
before  and  during  her  great  revolution.  Before  the  revo- 
lution, her  people  were  merely  ignorant ;  during  the  revo- 
lution, they  acted  under  the  lights  of  false  knowledge. 
An  idiot  is  ignorant,  and  does  little  harm ;  a  maniac  has 
false  ideas,  and  destroys,  burns  and  murders. 

Looking  again  at  the  nature  of  our  institutions,  we  find 
that  it  is  not  the  material  or  corporeal  interests  of  man 
alone  that  are  here  decided  by  the  common  voice  ;  — 
such,  for  instance,  as  those  pertaining  to  finance,  revenue, 
the  adjustment  of  the  great  economical  interests  of  socie- 
ty, the  rival  claims  between  agriculture,  commerce  and 
manufactures,  the  partition  and  distribution  of  legisla- 
tive, judicial  and  executive  powers,  with  a  long  catalogue 
of  others  of  a  kindred  nature ;  but  also  those  more  sol- 


182  NECESSITY   OP   EDUCATION 

emu  questions  which  pervade  the  innermost  sanctuary  of 
domestic  life,  and,  for  worship  or  for  sacrilege,  enter  the 
Holy  of  Holies  in  the  ark  of  society :  —  these  also  are 
submitted  to  the  general  arbitrament.  The  haughty  lord- 
ling,  whose  heart  never  felt  one  throb  for  the  welfare  of 
mankind,  gives  vote  and  verdict  on  the  extent  of  popular 
rights  ;  the  libertine  and  debauchee  give  vote  and  verdict 
on  the  sanctity  of  the  marriage  covenant ;  the  atheist 
on  the  definition  of  blasphemy.  Nor  is  this  great  people 
invited  merely  to  speculate,  and  frame  abstract  theories, 
on  these  momentous  themes ;  to  make  picture  models,  on 
paper,  in  their  closets  ;  they  are  not  invited  to  sketch 
Republics  of  Fancy  only,  but  they  are  commissioned  to 
make  Republics  of  Fact ;  and  in  such  Republics  as  they 
please  to  make,  others,  perforce,  must  please  to  live.  If 
I  do  not  like  my  minister,  or  my  parish,  I  can  sign  off, 
(as  we  term  it,)  and  connect  myself  with  another ;  if  I 
do  not  like  my  town,  I  can  move  out  of  it ;  but  where 
shall  a  man  sign  to,  or  move  to,  out  of  a  bad  world  ? 
Nor  do  our  people  hold  these  powers,  as  an  ornament 
merely,  as  some  ostensible  but  useless  badge  of  Freedom  ; 
but  they  keep  them  as  instruments  for  use,  and  sometimes 
wield  them  as  weapons  of  revenge.  So  closely  indeed 
are  we  inwoven  in  the  same  web  of  fate,  that  a  vote  given 
on  the  banks  of  the  Missouri  or  Arkansas  may  shake 
every  plantation  and  warehouse  on  the  Atlantic,  and, 
reaching  seaward,  overtake  and  baffle  enterprise,  into 
whatever  oceans  it  may  have  penetrated. 

Such,  then,  is  our  condition.  The  minds  that  are  to 
regulate  all  things  and  govern  all  things,  in  this  country, 
are  innately  strong  ;  they  are  intensely  stimulated  ;  they 
are  supplied  with  the  most  formidable  artillery  of  means ; 
and  each  one  is  authorized  to  form  its  own  working-plan, 


IN   A   REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  183 

its  own  ground-scheme,  according  to  which,  when  the  so- 
cial edifice  has  been  taken  to  pieces,  it  is  to  be  recon- 
structed ;  —  some  are  for  going  back  a  thousand  or  two 
thousand  years  for  their  model ;  others,  for  introducing 
what  they  consider  the  millennium,  at  once,  by  force  of 
law,  or  by  force  without  law. 

And  now,  my  friends,  I  ask,  with  the  deepest  anxiety, 
what  institutions  exist  amongst  us,  which  at  once  possess 
the  power  and  are  administered  with  the  efficiency,  requi- 
site to  save  us  from  the  dangers  that  spring  up  in  our  own 
bosoms  ?  That  the  propensities,  which  each  generation 
brings  into  the  world,  possess  terrific  power,  and  are 
capable  of  inflicting  the  completest  ruin,  none  can  deny. 
Nor  will  it  be  questioned  that  amongst  us,  they  have  an 
open  career,  and  a  command  of  means,  such  as  never 
before  co-existed.  What  antagonist  power  have  we  pro- 
vided against  them  ?  By  what  exorcism  can  we  lay  the 
spirits  we  have  raised  ?  Once,  brute  force,  directed  by  a 
few  men,  trampled  upon  the  many.  Here,  the  many  are 
the  possessors  of  that  very  force,  and  have  almost  abolished 
its  use  as  a  means  of  government.  The  French  gen- 
darmerie, the  British  horse-guards,  the  dreadful  punish- 
ment of  the  Siberian  mines,  will  never  be  copied  here. 
Should  the  government  resort  to  a  standing  army,  that 
army  would  consist  of  the  very  forces  they  dread,  organ- 
ized, equipped  and  officered.  Can  laws  save  us  ?  With 
us,  the  very  idea  of  legislation  is  reversed.  Once,  the 
law  prescribed  the  actions  and  shaped  the  wills  of  the 
multitude  ;  here,  the  wills  of  the  multitude  prescribe  and 
shape  the  law.  With  us,  legislators  study  the  will  of  the 
multitude,  just  as  natural  philosophers  study  a  volcano, 
—  not  with  any  expectation  of  doing  aught  to  the  volca- 
no, but  to  see  what  the  volcano  is  about  to  do  to  them. 
While  the  law  was  clothed  with  majesty  and  power,  and 


184  NECESSITY   OF   EDUCATION 

the  mind  of  the  multitude  was  weak,  then,  as  in  all  cases 
of  a  conflict  between  unequal  forces,  the  law  prevailed. 
But  now,  when  the  law  is  weak,  and  the  passions  of  the 
multitude  have  gathered  irresistible  strength,  it  is  falla- 
cious and  insane  to  look  for  security  in  the  moral  force 
of  the  law.  As  well  might  the  man  who  has  erected  his 
dwelling  upon  the  verge  of  a  cliff  overhanging  the  deep, 
when  the  equilibrium  of  the  atmosphere  is  destroyed,  and 
the  elements  are  on  fire,  and  every  billow  is  excavating 
his  foundations,  expect  to  still  the  tempest  by  reading  the 
Riot-act.  Government  and  law,  which  ought  to  be  the 
allies  of  justice  and  the  everlasting  foes  of  violence  and 
wrong,  will  here  be  moulded  into  the  similitude  of  the 
public  mind,  and  will  answer  to  it,  as,  in  water,  face  an- 
swereth  to  face. 

But,  if  arms  themselves  would  be  beaten  in  such  a  con- 
test, if  those  who  should  propose  the  renewal  of  ancient 
severities  in  punishment  would  themselves  be  punished, 
have  we  not  some  other  resource  for  the  security  of  modera- 
tion and  self-denial,  and  for  the  supremacy  of  order  and 
law  ?  Have  not  the  scholars  who  adorn  the  halls  of 
learning,  and  woo  almost  a  hallowed  serenity  to  dwell  in 
their  academic  shades,  —  have  they  not,  amongst  all  the 
languages  which  they  speak,  some  tongue  by  which  they 
can  charm  and  pacify  the  mighty  spirits  we  have  evoked 
into  being  ?  Alas  !  while  scholars  and  academists  are 
earnestly  debating  such  questions,  as  whether  the  name 
of  error  shall  or  shall  not  be  spelled  with  the  letter  u,  the 
soul  of  error  becomes  incarnate,  and  starts  up,  as  from 
the  earth,  myriad-formed  and  ubiquitous,  and  stands  by 
the  side  of  every  man,  and  whispers  transgression  into 
his  ear,  and,  like  the  first  Tempter,  entices  him  to  pluck 
the  beautiful,  but  fatal  fruit  of  some  forbidden  tree. 
Our  ancestors  seem  to  have  had  great  faith  that  the  alumni 


IN   A   REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  185 

of  our  colleges  would  diffuse  a  higher  order  of  intelli- 
gence through  the  whole  mass  of  the  people,  and  would 
imbue  them  with  a  love  of  sobriety  and  a  reverence  for 
justice.  But  either  the  leaven  has  lost  its  virtue,  or  the 
lump  has  become  too  large  ;  for,  surely,  in  our  day,  the 
mass  is  not  all  leavened. 

I  speak  with  reverence  of  the  labors  of  another  profession 
in  their  sacred  calling.  No  other  country  in  the  world 
has  ever  been  blessed  with  a  body  of  clergymen,  so  learn- 
ed, so  faithful,  .so  devout  as  ours.  But  by  traditionary 
custom  and  the  ingrained  habits  of  the  people,  the  efforts 
of  the  clergy  are  mainly  expended  upon  those  who  have 
passed  the  forming  state  ;  —  upon  adults,  whose  charac- 
ters, as  we  are  accustomed  to  express  it,  have  become 
fixed,  which  being  interpreted,  means,  that  they  have 
passed  from  fluid  into  flint.  Look  at  the  ablest  pastor,  in 
the  midst  of  an  adult  congregation  whose  early  education 
has  been  neglected.  Though  he  be  consumed  of  zeal, 
and  ready  to  die  of  toil,  in  their  behalf,  yet  I  seem  to  see 
him,  expending  his  strength  and  his  years  amongst  them, 
like  one  solitary  arborist  working,  single-handed  and 
alone,  in  a  wide  forest,  where  there  are  hundreds  of  stoop- 
ing and  contorted  trees,  and  he,  striving  with  tackle  and 
guy-ropes  to  undouble  their  convolutions,  and  to  straight- 
en the  flexures  in  trunks  whose  fibres  curled  as  they 
grew  ;  and,  with  his  naked  hand,  to  coax  out  gnarls  and 
nodosities  hard  enough  to  glance  off  lightning  ;  —  when, 
could  he  have  guided  and  trained  them  while  yet  they 
were  tender  shoots  and  young  saplings,  he  could  have 
shaped  them  into  beauty,  a  hundred  in  a  day. 

But  perhaps  others  may  look  for  security  to  the  public 
Press,  which  has  now  taken  its  place  amongst  the  organ- 
ized forces  of  modern  civilization.  Probably  its  politi- 
cal department  supplies  more  than  half  the  reading  of 


186  NECESSITY   OF   EDUCATION 

the  mass  of  our  people.  But,  bating  the  point,  whether, 
in  times  of  public  excitement,  when  the  society  and 
thoughtfulness  of  wisdom,  when  severe  and  exact 
truth,  are,  more  than  ever  else,  necessary,  —  whether,  at 
such  times,  the  press  is  not  itself  liable  to  be  inflamed  by 
the  heats  it  should  allay,  and  to  be  perverted  by  the  obli- 
quities it  should  rectify  ;  —  bating  this  point,  it  is  still 
obvious  that  its  principal  efforts  are  expended  upon  one 
department  only  of  all  our  social  duties.  The  very  exist- 
ence of  the  newspaper  press,  for  any  useful  purpose, 
presupposes  that  the  people  are  already  supplied  with  the 
elements  of  knowledge  and  inspired  with  the  love  of 
right ;  and  are  therefore  prepared  to  decide,  with  intelli- 
gence and  honesty,  those  complicated  and  conflicting 
claims,  which  the  tide  of  events  is  constantly  presenting, 
and  which,  by  the  myriad  messengers  of  the  press,  are 
carried  to  every  man's  fireside  for  his  adjudication.  For, 
of  what  value  is  it,  that  we  have  the  most  wisely-framed 
government  on  earth  ;  to  what  end  is  it,  that  the  wisest 
schemes  which  a  philanthropic  statesmanship  can  devise, 
are  propounded  to  the  people,  if  this  people  has  not  the 
intelligence  to  understand,  or  the  integrity  to  espouse 
them  ?  Each  of  two  things  is  equally  necessary  to  our 
political  prosperity  ;  namely,  just  principles  of  govern- 
ment and  administration,  on  one  side,  and  a  people  able 
to  understand  and  -resolute  to  uphold  them,  on  the  other. 
Of  what  use  is  the  most  exquisite  music  ever  composed 
by  the  greatest  masters  of  the  art,  until  you  have  orches- 
tra or  choir  that  can  perform  the  pieces  ?  Pupils  must 
thoroughly  master  the  vocal  elements,  musical  language 
must  be  learned,  voices  must  be  long  and  severely  trained, 
or  the  divinest  compositions  of  Haydn  or  Mozart  would 
only  set  the  teeth  of  an  auditory  on  edge.  And  so 
must  it  be  with  our  government  and  laws  ;  —  the  best 


IN   A    REPUBLICAN   GOVERNMENT.  187 

will  be  useless,  unless  we  have  a  people  who  will  appre- 
ciate and  uphold  them. 

Again,  then,  I  ask,  with  unmitigated  anxiety,  what  in- 
stitutions we  now  possess,  that,  can  furnish  defence  or  bar- 
rier against  the  action  of  those  propensities,  which  eacli 
generation  brings  into  the  world  as  a  part  of  its  being, 
and  which  our  institutions  foster  and  stimulate  into 
unparalleled  activity  and  vigor  ?  Can  any  Christian  man 
believe,  that  God  has  so  constituted  and  so  governs  the 
human  race,  that  it  is  always  and  necessarily  to  be  suici- 
dal of  its  earthly  welfare  ?  No  !  the  thought  is  impious. 
The  same  Almighty  Power  which  implants  in  our  nature 
the  germs  of  these  terrible  propensities,  has  endowed  us 
also  with  reason  and  conscience  and  a  sense  of  responsibil- 
ity to  Him  ;  and,  in  his  providence,  he  has  opened  a  way 
by  which  these  nobler  faculties  can  be  elevated  into  domin- 
ion and  supremacy  over  the  appetites  and  passions.  But 
if  this  is  ever  done,  it  must  be  mainly  done  during  the 
docile  and  teachable  years  of  childhood.  I  repeat  it,  my 
friends,  if  this  is  ever  done,  it  must  be  mainly  done  during 
the  docile  and  teachable  years  of  childhood.  Wretched, 
incorrigible,  demoniac,  as  any  human  being  may  ever 
have  become,  there  was  a  time  when  he  took  the  first  step 
in  error  and  in  crime ;  when,  for  the  first  time,  he  just 
nodded  to  his  fall,  on  the  brink  of  ruin.  Then,  ere  he 
was  irrecoverably  lost,  ere  he  plunged  into  the  abyss  of 
infamy  and  guilt,  he  might  have  been  recalled,  as  it  were 
by  the  waving  of  the  hand.  Fathers,  mothers,  patriots, 
Christians  !  it  is  this  very  hour  of  peril  through  which 
our  children  are  now  passing.  They  know  it  not,  but 
we  know  it ;  and  where  the  knowledge  is,  there  rests  the 
responsibility.  Society  is  responsible  ;  —  not  society  con- 
sidered as  an  abstraction,  but  society  as  it  consists  of  liv- 
ing members,  which  members  we  are.  Clergymen  are 


188    EDUCATION  IN  A  REPUBLICAN  GOVERNMENT. 

responsible  ;  —  all  men  who  have  enjoyed  the  opportuni- 
ties of  a  higher  education  in  colleges  and  universities  are 
responsible,  for  they  can  convert  their  means,  whether  of 
time  or  of  talent,  into  instruments  for  elevating  the  mass- 
es of  the  people.  The  conductors  of  the  public  press  are 
responsible,  for  they  have  daily  access  to  the  public  ear, 
and  can  infuse  just  notions  of  this  high  duty  into  the 
public  mind.  Legislators  and  rulers  are  responsible.  In 
our  country,  and  in  our  times,  no  man  is  worthy  the  hon- 
ored name  of  a  statesman,  who  does  not  include  the 
highest  practicable  education  of  the  people  in  all  his 
plans  of  administration.  He  may  have  eloquence,  he 
may  have  a  knowledge  of  all  history,  diplomacy,  jurispru- 
dence ;  and  by  these  he  might  claim,  in  other  countries, 
the  elevated  rank  of  a  statesman  ;  but,  unless  he  speaks, 
plans,  labors,  at  all  times  and  in  all  places,  for  the  culture 
and  edification  of  the  whole  people,  he  is  not,  he  cannot 
be,  an  American  statesman. 

If  this  dread  responsibility  for  the  fate  of  our  children 
be  disregarded,  how,  when  called  upon,  in  the  great 
eventful  day,  to  give  an  account  of  the  manner  in  which 
our  earthly  duties  have  been  discharged,  can  we  expect 
to  escape  the  condemnation  :  "  Inasmuch  as  ye  have  not 
done  it  to  one  of  the  least  of  these,  ye  have  not  done  it 
unto  me  "  ? 


LECTURE    IV. 
1840. 


LECTURE   IV. 

WHAT  GOD  DOES,  AND  WHAT  HE  LEAVES  FOE  MAN  TO 
DO,  IN  THE  WORK  OF  EDUCATION. 

GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  CONVENTION  : — 

WITH  the  coming  of  another  year,  I  come  to  you 
again,  asking  and  offering  sympathy  for  the  welfare  of 
our  children. 

When  I  last  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  a  convention 
of  the  friends  of  Common  Schools  in  this  county,  I 
addressed  them  on  the  subject  of  the  Necessity  of  Educa- 
tion, under  a  government  and  with  institutions  like  our 
own.  I  endeavored  to  demonstrate,  that  here,  in  our 
country  arid  in  our  age,  the  enlightenment  of  the  intel- 
lect, and  the  cultivation  of  the  affections,  of  the  rising 
generation,  had  not  been  left  optional  with  us,  but  made 
indispensable ;  that  the  efficient  and  thorough  education 
of  the  young  was  not  merely  commended  to  us,  as  a 
means  of  promoting  private  and  public  welfare,  but  com- 
manded, as  the  only  safeguard  against  such  a  variety  and 
extent  of  calamities  as  no  nation  on  earth  has  ever 
suffered. 

The  argument,  in  brief,  ran  thus:  —  All  men  are  born 
into  the  world  with  many  appetites  and  propensities  of  a 
purely  animal  and  selfish  nature.  Some  of  these  appe- 
tites and  propensities  are  necessary  to  the  existence  of  the 
individual,  and  therefore  they  adhere  to  him  and  remain 
a  part  of  him  as  long  as  he  lives  ;  others  are  necessary  to 
the  continuance  of  the  race,  and  therefore  we  must  ex- 

191 


192  THE   WOEK   OF   EDUCATION. 

pect  that  they  will  be  reproduced  with  every  new-born 
generation  to  the  end  of  time.  Each  individual,  for  in- 
stance, brings  into  the  world,  and  carries  through  it,  an 
appetite  for  food  ;  and  this  appetite  perpetually  tends  to 
an  excess  ruinous  to  health  and  fatal  to  life, —  among  the 
vulgar  running  into  the  coarseness  of  gluttony,  —  among 
the  refined  to  a  no  less  injurious  epicurism.  Each  indi- 
vidual brings  into  the  world,  and  carries  through  it,  an 
appetite  for  beverage ;  and  what  multitudes  has  this 
desire  stretched  upon  the  "  burning  marl  "  of  Intemper- 
ance !  All  are  born  with  a  love  of  wealth,  or,  at  least,  of 
acquisition,  which  leads  to  wealth  ;  —  and  we  should  be 
unfit  to  live  in  such  a  world  as  this  is,  without  such  an 
innate  tendency  ;  because,  in  health,  we  must  lay  by 
something  for  sickness,  and  in  the  strength  of  manhood 
something  for  the  helplessness  of  children  and  for  the 
feebleness  of  old  age.  Yet  how  easily  does  this  propen- 
sity run  out  into  avarice  and  cupidity,  leading  on  to  fraud, 
robbery,  rapine,  and  all  the  enormities  of  the  slave-trade, 
the  opium-trade,  the  rum-trade !  So  we  all  have  a  desire 
for  the  good  will  of  others,  —  an  instinct  beautifully 
adapted  to  diffuse  pleasure  over  all  the  intercourse  of 
life.  But  in  this  country,  where  the  rule  once  was  that 
the  honors  of  office  should  be  awarded  to  merit,  —  detur 
digniori,  —  the  sign  seems  to  have  been  mistaken  for  the 
thing  signified ;  and  now,  whenever  there  is  an  office  to 
be  filled,  a  crowd  of  applicants  throng  around,  more  than 
sufficient,  in  point  of  numbers,  to  fill  the  vacancy  for  the 
next  thousand  years.  Again,  a  certain  feeling  of  self- 
estimation  is  absolutely  essential  to  us  all ;  because, 
without  it,  every  man  would  be  awed  into  annihilation 
before  the  majesty  of  the  multitude,  or  the  glories  of  the 
visible  universe.  But  how  readily  does  this  feeling  of 
self-importance  burst  out  into  pride  and  a  love  of  domina- 


THE   WORK   OP   EDUCATION.  193 

tion,  and  that  intolerance  towards  the  opinions  of  others, 
which  does  not  seek  to  enlighten  or  persuade,  but  dog- 
matizes, denounces,  and  persecutes ! 

All  history  cries  out,  with  all  her  testimonies  and  her 
admonitions,  proclaiming  to  what  excesses  these  innate 
and  universal  appetites  may  grow,  when  supplied  with 
opportunities  and  incitements  for  indulgence.     If  men 
consult  their  propensities  alone,  no  sacrifice  ever  seems 
too  great  to  purchase  indulgence  for  the  lowest  and  mean- 
est of  them  all.     Each  one  of  them  is  not  only  capable 
of  unlimited  growth,  but  each,  also,  is  blind  to  all  con- 
sequences, and   demands  gratification,  though  the  next 
hour  brings  perdition  as  the  penalty.     We  need  not  go 
back  to  patriarchal  or  primeval  times  to  find  a  man  who, 
because  he  was  hungry  or  thirsty,  would  barter  a  glorious 
inheritance  for  a  mess  of  pottage  ;  or  a  woman  who  would 
forfeit    paradise     through    curiosity    to   taste    an   apple. 
When  the  political  destiny  of  his  family  and  of  all  France 
depended  upon  the  speed  which  Louis  XVI.  should  make 
in  his  flight  from  Paris,  he  paused  by  the  wayside  to 
drink  a  bottle  of  Burgundy,  —  said  coolly,  that  it  was 
the  best  bottle  he  overdrank,  —  and  suffered  the  scale, 
which  held  the  fortunes  of  twenty-five  millions  of  people, 
to  turn,  irrevocably,  while  he  prolonged  his  gustations.    To 
add  a  few  more  items  to  his  inventory  of  conquered  na- 
tions, Napoleon  snatched  the  scythe  from  the  hand  of 
Death,  'and,  forerunning  the  great  Destroyer,  he  strewed 
the  earth,  from  torrid  sands  to  arctic  snows,  with   the 
corses   of    human  slain,  mowed  down  in   the    morning 
beauty  and  vigor  of  life ;  and,  rather  than  not  to  be  em- 
peror at  all,  he  would  have  reigned  the  emperor  of  a  Euro- 
pean solitude.     He  played  the  game  of  war,  as  he  played 
his  favorite  game  of  chess,  —  for  the  sake  of  triumph,  — 
making   no   more   account  of   nations   than   of    pawns. 

VOL.   I.  13 


194  THE  WOKK   OF  EDUCATION. 

Pope  Innocent  III.  founded  an  Inquisition,  modelled 
after  the  plan  of  Pandemonium,  that  he  might  compel 
mankind  to  acknowledge  the  infallibility  of  his  dogmas. 
Notwithstanding  the  manifest  intentions  of  nature  in 
making  the  sexes  almost  numerically  equal,  the  Sultan 
culls  nations  to  fill  his  seraglio  with  beauty.  Did  not 
Mark  Antony  forget  his  hard-earned  fame,  perfidiously 
abandon  his  faithful  troops,  and  shut  his  eyes  upon  the 
vision  of  a  kingdom,  for  a  transient  hour  of  voluptuous- 
ness in  the  arms  of  Cleopatra  ?  Herod  hears  that  a 
man-child  is  born  in  Judsea,  who  may  one  day  endanger 
his  throne  ;  and  forthwith,  to  avert  that  possible  event, 
he  murders  all  the  male  children  in  the  land  under  two 
years  of  age ;  and  the  moment  power  was  given,  a  wo- 
man, to  avenge  a  private  pique,  brings  in  the  head  of 
John  the  Baptist  on  a  charger.  Even  good  men,  —  those 
for  whose  steadfastness  we  would  almost  be  willing  to 
pledge  our  lives,  —  exemplify  the  terrible  strength  of  the 
propensities.  Moses  rebels ;  David  murders ;  Peter, 
although  forewarned,  yet  denies  his  Master,  and  for- 
swears himself. 

Now,  the  germs  or  elements  of  these  propensities  be- 
long to  us  all.  We  possess  them  at  birth;  they  abide  with 
us  till  death.  Vast  differences  exist  in  the  power  which 
they  exert  over  men,  owing  to  differences  in  their  innate 
vigor ;  still  greater  differences,  perhaps,  result  from 
early  education.  In  bad  men  they  predominate,  and 
break  out  into  the  commission  of  as  much  iniquity  as 
finite  beings,  with  limited  means,  can  compass.  They 
exist  also  in  good  men  ;  but,  in  them,  they  are  either 
feebly  developed,  or  they  are  bound  and  leashed  in  by 
pure  and  holy  affections.  By  nature,  they  were  boiling 
seas  of  passion  in  the  breasts  of  Socrates  and  of  Wash- 
ington ;  but  god-like  sentiments  of  justice  and  duty  and 


THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  195 

benevolence  kept  down  their  rage,  as  the  deep  granite 
beneath  New  England's  soil  keeps  down  the  central  fires 
of  the  globe,  and  forbids  earthquake  or  volcano  to  agitate 
her  surface.  When  subordinated  to  conscience  and  the 
will  of  God,  these  propensities  give  ardor  to  our  zeal  and 
strength  to  our  exertions  ;  just  as  the  genius  of  man  con- 
verts wind  and  fire  from  destroyers  into  servants. 

From  our  very  constitution,  then,  there  is  a  downward 
gravitation  forever  to  be  overcome.  The  perpetual  bias 
of  our  instincts  is,  from  competency  and  temperance  to 
luxury  and  inebriation  ;  from  frugality  to  avarice ;  from 
honest  earnings  to  fraudulent  gains ;  from  a  laudable 
desire  of  reputation,  and  a  reasonable  self-estimate,  to 
unhallowed  ambition,  and  a  determination  to  usurp  the 
prerogative  of  God  by  writing  our  creeds  on  other  men's 
souls.  Hence  these  propensities  require  some  mighty 
counterpoise  to  balance  their  proclivity  to  wrong.  They 
must  he  governed,  —  cither  by  the  pressure  of  outward 
force,  or  by  the  supremacy  of  inward  principle.  In  other 
countries  and  ages,  external  force,  —  the  civil  execu- 
tioner, Pretorian  cohorts,  Janizaries,  standing  armies,  an 
established  priesthood,  —  have  kept  them  down.  The 
propensities  and  appetites  of  a  few  men  have  overlaid  and 
smothered  those  of  the  rest.  A  few  men,  whom  we  call 
tyrants  and  monsters,  having  got  the  mastery,  have 
prevented  thousands  of  others  from  being  tyrants  and 
monsters  like  themselves.  And  although  it  is  with  entire 
justice  that  we  charge  the  despotisms  of  the  old  world 
with  having  dwarfed  and  crippled  whatever  is  great  and 
noble  in  human  nature ;  yet  it  is  equally  true  that  they 
have  dwarfed  and  crippled,  in  an  equal  degree,  whatever 
is  injurious  and  base.  The  Neros  and  Napoleons  have 
prevented  others  from  being  Neros  and  Napoleons,  as  well 
as  from  becoming  Senecas  and  Howards. 


196  THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION. 

But  with  the  changed  institutions  of  this  country,  all  is 
changed.  Here  history  may  be  said,  in  familiar  phrase, 
not  merely  to  have  turned  over  a  new  leaf,  but  to  have 
opened  a  new  set  of  books.  With  our  Revolution,  the 
current  of  human  events  was  turned  quite  round,  and  set 
upon  a  new  course.  That  external  power  which,  thereto- 
fore, had  palsied  the  propensities  of  the  mass,  was  abol- 
ished. Instead  of  the  old  axiom,  that  the  ruler  is  a  lord, 
—  a  vicegerent  of  God,  —  here,  to  a  proverb,  rulers  are 
servants.  Lightly  and  fearfully  the  law  lays  its  hand 
upon  men  ;  and,  should  the  wisest  law  ever  framed  chafe 
the  passions  or  propensities  of  the  majority,  or  of  men 
who  can  muster  a  majority,  they  speak,  and  the  law 
perishes.  The  will  of  the  people  must  be  our  law, 
whether  that  will  reads  the  moral  code  forwards  or  back- 
wards. 

Now,  for  one  moment,  compare  the  collected  vastness 
of  men's  desires  with  the  sum  of  the  world's  resources. 
Compare  the  demand  with  the  supply,  where  the  propen- 
sities are  the  customers.  Suppose  the  wealth  of  this 
country  were  divided  into  fifteen  million  equal  parts,  and 
each  man  were  allowed  to  subscribe  for  what  number  of 
shares  he  might  please ;  how  many,  think  you,  would 
have  subscribed,  before  it  would  be  announced  that  all 
the  stock  had  been  taken  up  ?  Had  each  man  permission 
to  drop  a  folded  ballot  into  the  urn  of  fate,  designating 
the  rank  and  the  office  which  he  and  his  children  should 
hold,  would  not  the  nominal  aristocracy  be  tremendous  ? 
Were  each  religious  dogmatist  and  bigot  authorized  to 
write  out  article's  of  faith  for  universal  adoption,  what  a. 
mad-house  of  creeds  and  theological  systems  would  there 
be  !  But  this  is  endless.  All  know,  if  every  holder  of  a 
lottery  ticket  could  name  the  amount  of  his  prize,  how 
soon  the  office  would  be  bankrupt. 


THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  197 

Now  the  simple  question  for  an  American,  is,  whether 
all  this  mighty  accession  of  power,  growing  out  of  our 
free  institutions,  shall  or  shall  not  be  placed  in  the  hands 
of  these  ravenous  and  tyrannizing  propensities. 

From  this  view  of  the  subject  it  is  obvious,  that  we  may 
become  just  as  much  worse  than  any  other  nation  that 
ever  existed,  as  the  founders  of  our  institutions  hoped  we 
should  be  better.  If  the  propensities  are  to  prevail,  then 
speculation  will  supersede  industry ;  violence  will  usurp 
the  prerogatives  of  the  law  ;  the  witness  will  be  perjured 
upon  the  stand,  and  the  guilty  be  rescued  by  forsworn 
jurors  ;  the  grand  council-halls  of  the  nation  will  be  con- 
verted from  an  Areopagus  of  wise  and  reverend  men,  into 
a  gladiatorial  ring  ;  the  depositaries  of  public  and  of 
private  trusts  will  administer  them  for  personal  ends  ;  not 
only  individuals,  but  States,  will  become  reckless  of  their 
obligations  ;  elections  will  be  decided  by  bribery  and  cor- 
ruption ;  and  the  newspaper  press,  which  scatters  its 
sheets  over  the  country,  thick  as  snow-flakes  in  a  wintry 
storm,  will  justify  whatever  is  wrong  on  one  side,  and 
vilify  whatever  is  right  on  the  other,  until  nothing  that  is 
right  will  be  left  on  either.  Ay,  my  friends,  if  you  put 
your  ear  to  the  ground,  can  you  not  hear,  even  now,  the 
sappers  and  miners  at  their  work  ? 

Even  in  the  present  state  of  society,  and  with  all  our 
boastings  of  civilization  arid  Christianity,  if  all  men  were 
certain  that  they  could,  with  entire  impunity,  indulge 
their  wishes  for  a  single  night,  what  a  world  would  be 
revealed  to  us  in  the  morning !  Should  all  selfish  desires 
at  once  burst  their  confines,  and  swell  to  the  extent  of 
their  capacity,  it  would  be  as  though  each  drop  of  the 
morning  dew  were  suddenly  enlarged  into  an  ocean. 

Does  any  possessor  of  wealth,  or  leisure,  or  learning, 
ask,  "  What  interest  have  I  in  the  education  of  the  multi- 


198  THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION. 

tude  ? "  I  reply,  You  have  at  least  this  interest,  that, 
unless  their  minds  are  enlightened  by  knowledge  and  con- 
trolled by  virtuous  principle,  there  is  not,  between  their 
appetites  and  all  you  hold  dear  upon  earth,  so  much  as 
the  defence  of  a  spider's  web.  Without  a  sense  of  the 
inviolability  of  property,  your  deeds  are  but  waste-paper. 
Without  a  sense  of  the  sacredness  of  person  and  life,  you 
are  only  a  watch-dog  whose  baying  is  to  be  silenced,  that 
your  house  may  be  more  securely  entered  and  plundered. 
Even  a  guilty  few  can  destroy  the  peace  of  the  virtuous 
many.  One  incendiary  can  burn  faster  than  a  thousand 
industrious  workmen  can  build  ;  —  and  this  is  as  true  of 
social  rights  as  of  material  edifices. 

Had  God,  then,  provided  no  means  by  which  tin's  part 
of  our  nature  can  be  controlled,  we  should  indeed  say 
that  we  had  been  lifted  up  to  heaven  in  point  of  privi- 
leges, that  we  might,  so  much  the  more  certainly,  be 
dashed  in  pieces  by  our  inevitable  fall. 

But  we  have  not  been  inexorably  subjected  to  such  a 
doom.  If  it  befalls  us,  it  befalls  us  with  our  own  consent. 
Means  of  escape  are  vouchsafed  ;  and  not  of  escape  only, 
but  of  infinite  peace  and  joy. 

The  world  is  to  be  rescued  through  physical,  intel- 
lectual, moral  and  religious  action  upon  the  young.  I 
say,  upon  the  young,  for  the  number  of  grown  men  who 
ever  change  character  for  the  better  is  far  too  small  to  lay 
the  foundation  of  any  hope  of  a  general  reform.  After 
the  age  of  twenty-five, —  or  even  after  that  of  twenty-one 
years,  —  few  men  commence  a  course  of  virtue  or  abandon 
one  of  vice  ;  —  and  even  when  this  is  done,  its  cause  almost 
invariably  dates  back  to  some  early  impression,  which  for 
many  years  has  lain  dormant  in  the  mind.  Let  that 
period  be  passed,  and,  ordinarily,  you  must  wait  for  a 
death-bed  repentance  ;  and  often  will  your  waiting  be  in 


THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  199 

vain  even  for  that.  By  the  time  the  age  of  manhood  has 
been  reached,  the  course  of  life  has  usually  acquired  a 
momentum  which  propels  it  onwards,  substantially  in  the 
same  direction,  to  its  close. 

Now  for  the  great  end  of  ransoming  the  human  race 
from  its  brutish  instincts  and  its  demoniac  indulgences, 
let  us  see  what  the  benevolence  of  God  does  for  us,  in  the 
common  course  of  nature  and  providence,  and  what  His 
wisdom  has  left  for  us  to  do ;  — -because  it  is  obvious,  that 
He  may  go  on  doing  his  part  of  the  work,  for  a  hundred, 
or  for  a  thousand  generations,  and  yet,  unless  we  also  do 
our  part,  the  work  never  will  be  done.  And  it  may  be 
further  remarked,  that  while  He  does  His  part,  and  we 
neglect  ours,  the  work,  so  far  from  being  half  done,  will 
be  worse  than  undone.  Our  folly  perverting  His  good- 
ness will  be  like  an  unskilful  hand  operating  upon  an 
exquisitely  wrought  machine.  But  His  part  of  the  work, 

—  that  is,  the  general  course  of  nature  and  providence, 

—  will  go  on,  whether  we  co-operate  or  oppose.    It  is  not 
for  us,  therefore,  to  say  with  the  Psalmist,  "  Awake  !  why 
sleepest  Thou,  O  Lord  !  "    for  it  is  not  the  Lord  who 
sleeps,  but  it  is  we  ourselves. 

The  general  truth  here  stated  may  find  its  illustrations 
and  analogies  in  all  the  departments  of  nature.  I  will 
give  only  a  single  example. 

The  husbandman  is  promised  that  seed-time  and  harvest 
shall  not  fail ;  and,  in  pursuance  of  that  promise,  the 
fountains  of  the  clouds  are  opened  to  saturate  the  earth 
with  fatness  ;  the  sun  shoots  a  genial  warmth  into  the  soil, 
and  the  rich  mould  and  the  richer  atmosphere  are  ready 
for  a  magical  transformation  into  verdure  and  flowers  and 
fruit ;  —  but  unless  the  husbandman  knows  how  to  scatter 
the  seed  at  the  right  time,  and  to  cultivate  the  tender 
plant  in  the  right  way,  in  vain  shall  the  fields  be  visited 
by  the  reapers. 


200  THE  WORK   OP  EDUCATION. 

For  all  Africa  and  for  all  Asia,  nature  has  done  her  part 
of  the  work,  for  thousands  of  years  ;  and  yet  the  miser- 
able generations  rise  and  suffer  and  perish,  like  so  many 
swarms  of  insects  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile  or  the  Ganges. 
Nor  does  nature  show  any  symptoms  of  impatience  at 
their  delay ;  —  with  awful  tranquillity,  she  waits  for  their 
part  of  the  work  to  be  done. 

The  first  thing  done  for  us,  in  the  course  of  nature  and 
providence,  is  the  creation  of  children  in  a  state  of  entire 
ignorance  and  receptiveness.  Were  children  born  with 
characters  full-formed,  —  with  minds  inflexibly  made  up 
on  all  possible  subjects,  and  armed  at  all  points  for  their 
defence  ;  —  were  babes,  as  soon  as  they  can  speak,  to  start 
up  into  ferocious  partisans  and  fanatics,  —  then  nature 
would  have  done  the  whole  work,  and  left  nothing  for  us 
to  do ;  —  nay,  in  that  case,  she  would  have  rendered  it 
impossible  for  us  to  interfere,  to  any  practical  purpose. 
But  it  depends  hardly  less  upon  the  language  of  the 
household,  which,  of  all  the  tongues  upon  earth,  the  child 
shall  most  readily  speak,  than  it  does  upon  the  opinions 
of  the  household,  what  opinions,  on  a  great  variety  of  the 
most  important  subjects,  he  shall  adopt.  Hence  we  find, 
almost  without  exception,  the  children  of  Pagans  to  be 
Pagans ;  of  Mahommedans,  Mahommedans ;  and  of 
Catholics  and  Protestants,  to  be  respectively  Catholics 
and  Protestants.  It  depends  upon  residence  in  a  partic- 
ular latitude  and  longitude,  what  natural  objects  a  child 
shall  become  acquainted  with  ;  and  one  who  is  born 
in  the  frigid  zone  will  be  as  little  accustomed  to  the  social 
habits  as  to  the  natural  productions  of  the  torrid.  And 
finally,  it  depends  upon  the  examples  and  the  institutions, 
amidst  which  a  child  is  reared,  what  shall  be  his  earliest, 
and  probably  his  most  enduring  impressions,  respecting 
the  great  realities  of  existence. 


THE   WORK   OP   EDUCATION.  201 

Here,  then,  is  an  ample  sphere  for  the  exertion  of  our 
influence.  We  should  transfuse  our  hest  sentiments, 
transplant  our  best  ideas  and  habits,  into  the  receptive 
soul  of  childhood.  It  is  our  duty  to  separate  the  right  from 
the  wrong,  in  our  own  minds  and  conduct,  and  to  incor- 
porate the  former  only  in  the  minds  and  conduct  of  chil- 
dren. Then  the  force  of  habit  will  aid  them  in  doing 
those  duties,  whose  performance,  in  our  own  case,  habit 
may  have  opposed.  It  is  an  admirable  proverb  which 
says,  "  Happy  is  the  man  whose  habits  are  his  friends." 
Could  we  ever  know  that  we  are  infallibly  right  on  all  the 
great  questions  which  pertain  to  our  temporal  and  eternal 
destiny,  then  it  might  be  our  duty  to  inculcate  our  views 
authoritatively  and  dogmatically  upon  children,  and  to 
insist  upon  their  acquiescence  and  conformity  ;  but  as  we 
can  never  know  in  this  life,  with  absolute  and  positive 
certainty,  that  we  are  right  on  such  mighty  themes,  it 
becomes  our  first  and  highest  duty  to  awaken  in  their 
hearts  the  sentiment  of  truth,  to  inculcate  the  love  and 
the  pursuit  of  it,  wherever  it  may  be  found,  and  to  teach 
them  to  abandon  every  thing  else,  even  their  own  most 
cherished  opinions,  for  its  sake.  That  is  the  worst  of 
sacrilege  which  creates  a  belief  in  a  child's  soul  that  any 
opinion  is  better  than  truth. 

The  entire  helplessness  of  children,  for  a  long  period 
after  birth,  is  another  circumstance  not  within  our  control, 
and  one  deserving  of  great  moral  consideration.  In  one 
respect,  children  may  be  said  to  possess  their  greatest 
power,  at  this,  the  feeblest  period  of  their  existence  ;  —  a 
power  which, —  however  paradoxical  it  may  seem, — 
originates  in  helplessness,  and  therefore  diminishes  just 
in  proportion  as  they  gain  strength.  It  was  most  beauti- 
fully said  by  Dr.  Thomas  Brown,  that  after  a  child  has 
grown  to  manhood,  "  he  cannot,  even  then,  by  the  most 


202  THE  WORK   OP   EDUCATION. 

imperious  orders,  which  he  addresses  to  the  most  obse- 
quious slaves,  exercise  an  authority  more  commanding 
than  that,  which,  in  the  very  first  hours  of  his  life,  when 
a  few  indistinct  cries  and  tears  were  his  only  language, 
he  exercised  irresistibly  over  hearts,  of  the  very  existence 
of  which  he  was  ignorant."  It  may  be  added  that,  under 
no  terror  of  a  despot's  rage ;  under  no  bribe  of  honors  or 
of  wealth ;  under  no  fear  of  torture  or  of  death,  have 
greater  struggles  been  made,  or  greater  sacrifices  endured, 
than  for  those  helpless  creatures,  who,  for  all  purposes  of 
immediate  availability,  are  so  utterly  worthless.  All, 
unless  it  be  the  lowest  savages,  fly  to  the  succor  and  melt 
at  the  sufferings  of  infancy.  God  has  so  adapted  their 
unconscious  pleadings  to  our  uncontrollable  impulses, 
that  they,  in  their  weakness,  have  the  prerogative  of  com- 
mand, and  we,  in  our  strength,  the  instinct  of  obedience. 
It  was  the  highest  wisdom,  then,  not  to  intrust  the  fate  of 
infancy  to  any  volitions  or  notions  of  expediency,  on  our 
part ;  but,  at  once,  by  a  sovereign  law  of  the  constitution, 
to  make  our  knowledge  and  power  submissive  to  their 
inarticulate  commands. 

In  proportion  as  this  power  of  helplessness  wanes,  the 
child  begins  to  excite  our  interest  and  sympathy,  by  a 
thousand  personal  attractions  and  forms  of  loveliness. 
The  sweetness  of  lips  that  never  told  a  lie  ;  the  smile  that 
celebrates  the  first-born  emotions  of  love  ;  the  intense  gaze 
at  bright  colors  and  striking  forms,  gathering  together  the 
elements  from  whose  full  splendor  and  gorgeousness 
Raphael  painted  and  Homer  wrote ;  the  plastic  imagina- 
tion, fusing  the  solid  substances  of  the  earth,  to  be  recast 
into  shapes  of  beauty  ;  —  what  Rothschild,  what  Croesus 
has  wealth  that  can  purchase  these  ! 

How  cheap  and  how  beautiful,  too,  are  the  joys  of 
childhood  !  Paley,  in  speaking  of  the  evidences  of  the 


THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  203 

goodness  of  God,  says,  there  is  always  some  "  bright  spot 
in  the  prospect ;  "  —  some  "  single  example,"  "  by  which 
each  man  finds  himself  more  convinced  than  by  all  others 
put  together.  I  seem,  for  my  own  part,"  he  adds,  "  to 
see  the  benevolence  of  the  Deity  more  clearly  in  the 
pleasures  of  young  children,  than  in  any  thing  in  the 
world.  The  pleasures  of  grown  persons  may  be  reckoned 
partly  of  their  own  procuring,  especially  if  there  has  been 
any  industry,  or  contrivance,  or  pursuit  to  come  at  them  ; 
or,  if  they  are  founded,  like  music,  painting,  &c.,  upon 
any  qualifications  of  their  own  acquiring.  But  the  pleas- 
ures of  a  healthy  infant  are  so  manifestly  provided  for  it 
by  another,  and  the  benevolence  of  the  provision  is  so 
unquestionable,  that  every  child  I  see  at  its  sport  affords, 
to  my  mind,  a  kind  of  sensible  evidence  of  the  finger  of 
God,  and  of  the  disposition  which  directs  it."  At  the  age 
of  two  or  three  years,  before  a  child  has  ever  seen  a  jest- 
book,  whence  comes  his  glad  and  gladdening  laughter,  — 
at  once  costless  and  priceless  ?  Whence  comes  that  flow 
of  joy,  that  gurgles  and  gushes  up  from  his  heart,  like 
water  flung  from  a  spouting-spring  ?  That  bright-haired 
boy,  how  came  he  as  full  of  music  and  poetry  as  a  sing- 
ing-book ?  Who  imprisoned  a  dancing-school  in  each  of 
his  toes,  which  sends  him  from  the  earth  with  bounding 
and  rebounding  step  ?  What  an  JEolian  harp  the  wind 
finds  in  him !  Nor  music  alone  does  it  awaken  in  his 
bosom  ;  for,  let  but  its  feathery  touch  play  upon  his  locks, 
or  fan  his  cheek,  and  gravitation  lets  go  of  him,  —  he 
floats  and  sails  away,  as  though  his  body  were  a  feather 
and  his  soul  the  zephyr  that  played  with  it.  Indeed, 
half  his  discords  come,  because  the  winds,  the  buds,  the 
flowers,  the  light,  —  so  many  fingers  of  the  hand  of  nature, 
—  are  all  striving  to  play  different  tunes  upon  him  at  the 
same  time.  These  delights  are  born  of  the  exquisite 


204  THE   WOEK   OF   EDUCATION. 

workmanship  of  the  Creator,  before  the  ignorance  and 
wickedness  of  men  have  had  time  to  mar  it ;  —  and  they 
flow  out  spontaneously  and  unconsciously,  like  a  bird's 
song,  or  a. flower's  beauty. 

Even  to  those  who  have  no  children  of  their  own, — 
unless  they  are,  as  the  apostle  expresses  it,  "  without 
natural  affection,"  —  even  to  those,  the  wonderful  growth 
of  a  child,  in  knowledge,  in  power,  in  affection,  makes  all 
other  wonders  tame.  Who  ever  saw  a  wretch  so  hea- 
thenish, so  dead,  that  the  merry  song  or  shout  of  a  group 
of  gleeful  children  did  not  galvanize  the  misanthrope  into 
an  exclamation  of  joy  ?  What  orator  or  poet  has  elo- 
quence that  enters  the  soul  with  such  quick  and  subtle 
electricity,  as  a  child's  tear  of  pity  for  suffering,  or  his 
frown  of  indignation  at  wrong  ?  A  child  is  so  much  more 
than  a  miracle,  that  its  growth  and  future  blessedness  are 
the  only  things  worth  working  miracles  for.  God  did  not 
make  the  child  for  the  sake  of  the  earth,  nor  for  the  sake 
of  the  sun  ;  but  he  made  the  earth  and  the  sun,  as  a  foot- 
stool and  a  lamp,  to  sustain  his  steps  and  to  enlighten  his 
path,  during  a  few  only  of  the  earliest  years  of  his  immor- 
tal existence. 

You  perceive,  my  friends,  that  in  speaking  of  the  love- 
liness of  children,  and  their  power  to  captivate  and  subdue 
all  hearts  to  a  willing  bondage,  I  have  used  none  but  mas- 
culine pronouns,  —  referring  only  to  the  stronger  and 
hardier  sex  ;  —  for  by  what  glow  and  melody  of  speech 
can  I  sketch  the  vision  of  a  young  and  beautiful  daughter, 
with  all  her  bewildering  enchantments  ?  By  what  cun- 
ning art  can  the  coarse  material  of  words  be  refined  and 
subtilized  into  color,  and  motion,  and  music,  till  they  shall 
paint  her  bloom  of  health,  "  celestial,  rosy  red  ;  "  till  they 
shall  trace  those  motions  that  have  the  grace  and  the  free- 
dom of  flame,  and  echo  the  sweet  and  affectionate  tones 


THE    WORK    OF   EDUCATION.  205 

of  a  spirit  yet  warm  from  the  hand  that  created  it  ? 
What  less  than  a  divine  power  could  have  strung  the 
living  chords  of  her  voice  to  pour  out  unbidden  and  exult- 
ing harmonies  ?  What  fount  of  sacred  flame  kindles  and 
feeds  the  light  that  gleams  from  the  pure  depths  of  her 
eye,  and  flushes  her  cheek  with  the  hues  of  a  perpetual 
morning,  arid  shoots  auroras  from  her  beaming  forehead  ? 
Oh !  profane  not  this  last  miracle  of  heavenly  workmanship 
with  sight  or  sound  of  earthly  impurity.  Keep  vestal 
vigils  around  her  inborn  modesty ;  and  let  the  quickest 
lightnings  blast  her  tempter.  She  is  Nature's  mosaic  of 
charms.  Looked  upon  as  we  look  upon  an  object  in 
Natural  History,  —  upon  a  gazelle  or  a  hyacinth,  —  she  is 
a  magnet  to  draw  pain  out  of  a  wounded  breast.  While 
we  gaze  upon  her,  and  press  her  in  ecstasy  to  our  bosom, 
we  almost  tremble,  lest  suddenly  she  should  unfurl  a  wing 
and  soar  to  some  better  world.  But,  my  friends,  with 
what  emotions  ought  we  to  tremble,  when  our  thoughts 
pass  from  the  present  to  the  future,  —  when  we  ponder 
on  the  possibilities  of  evil  as  well  as  of  good,  which  now, 
all  unconsciously  to  herself,  lie  hidden  in  her  spirit's 
coming  history,  —  now  hidden,  but  to  be  revealed 
soon  as  her  tiny  form  shall  have  expanded  to  the  stature 
and  her  spirit  to  the  power  of  womanhood !  When  we 
reflect,  on  the  one  hand,  that  this  object,  almost  of  our 
idolatry,  may  go  through  life,  solacing  distress,  minister- 
ing to  want,  redeeming  from  guilt,  making  vice  mourn 
the  blessedness  it  has  lost  because  it  was  not  virtue ;  and, 
as  she  walks  holy  and  immaculate  before  God  and  before 
men,  some  aerial  anthem  shall  seem  to  be  forever  hymn- 
ing peaceful  benedictions  around  her  ;  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  that,  from  the  dark  fountains  of  a  corrupted  heart, 
she  shall  send  forth  a  secret,  subtle  poison,  compared  with 
which  all  earthly  venoms  are  healthful ;  —  when  we  reflect 


206  THE  WORK   OF   EDUCATION. 

that,  so  soon,  she  may  become  one  or  the  other  of  all  this, 
the  pen  falls,  the  tongue  falters  and  fails,  while  the  hope- 
ful, fearful  heart  rushes  from  thanksgiving  to  prayer,  and 
from  prayer  to  thanksgiving. 

But  the  most  striking  and  wonderful  provision  which  Is 
made,  in  the  accustomed  course  of  nature  and  providence, 
for  the  welfare  of  children,  remains  to  be  mentioned. 
Reflect,  for  a  moment,  my  friends,  how  it  has  come  to 
pass,  that  the  successive  generations  of  children,  from 
Adam  to  ourselves, —  each  one  of  which  was  wholly  inca- 
pable of  providing  for  itself  for  a  single  day,  —  how  has  it 
come  to  pass,  that  these  successive  generations  have  been 
regularly  sustained  and  continued  to  the  present  day, 
without  intermission  or  failure  ?  The  Creator  did  not 
leave  these  ever-returning  exigencies  without  adequate 
provision ;  —  for  how  universal  and  how  strong  is  the 
love  of  offspring  in  the  parental  breast !  This  love  is  the 
grand  resource,  —  the  complement  of  all  other  forces. 
"We  are  accustomed  to  call  the  right  of  self-preservation 
the  first  law  of  nature ;  yet  how  this  love  of  offspring 
overrules  and  spurns  it !  To  rescue  her  child,  the  mother 
breaks  through  a  wall  of  fire,  or  plunges  into  the  fathom- 
less flood ; —  or,  if  it  must  be  consumed  in  the  flames, 
or  lie  down  in  the  deep,  she  clasps  it  to  her  bosom  and 
perishes  with  it.  This  maternal  impulse  does  not  so 
much  subjugate  self,  as  forget  that  there  is  any  such  thing 
as  self;  and,  were  .the  mother  possessed  of  a  thousand 
lives,  for  the  welfare  of  her  offspring  she  would  squander 
them  all.  Mourning,  disconsolate  mothers,  bewailing  lost 
children !  Behold  the  vast  procession,  which  reaches 
from  the  earliest  periods  of  the  race  to  those  who  now 
stand  bending  and  weeping  over  the  diminutive  graves 
which  swallow  up  their  hopes ;  and  what  a  mighty  attes- 
tation do  they  give  to  the  strength  of  that  instinct  which 


THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  207 

God  lias  implanted  in  the  maternal  breast !  Nor  is  it  in 
the  human  race  only  that  this  love  of  offspring  bears 
sway.  All  the  higher  orders  of  animated  nature  are 
subjected  to  its  control.  It  inspires  the  most  timid  races 
of  the  brute  creation  with  boldness,  and  melts  the  most 
ferocious  of  them  into  love.  To  express  its  strength  and 
watchfulness,  the  hare  is  said  to  sleep  with  ever-open  eye 
on  the  form  where  her  young  repose  ;  and  the  pelican  to 
tear  open  her  breast  with  her  own  beak,  and  pour  out  her 
life-blood  to  feed  her  nestlings.  The  famishing  eagle 
grasps  her  prey  in  her  talons  and  carries  it  to  her  lofty 
nest ;  and  though  she  screams  witli  hunger,  yet  she  will 
not  taste  it  until  her  young  are  satisfied  ;  and  the  gaunt 
lioness  bears  the  spoils  of  the  forest  to  her  cavern,  nor 
quenches  the  fire  of  her  own  parched  lips  until  her  whelps 
have  feasted.  And  thus,  from  the  parent  stock,  —  from 
the  Adam  and  Eve,  whether  of  animals  or  of  men,  who 
came  into  the  world  full-formed  from  the  hands  of  their 
Creator, —  down  through  all  successive  generations,  to 
the  present  dwellers  upon  earth,  has  this  invisible  but 
mighty  instinct  of  the  parents'  heart  brooded  and  held 
its  jealous  watch  over  their  young,  nurturing  their  weak- 
ness and  instructing  their  ignorance,  until  the  day  of  their 
maturity,  when  it  became  their  turn  to  re-affirm  this  great 
law  of  nature  towards  their  offspring. 

This,  my  friends,  is  not  sentimentality.  It  is  the  con- 
templation of  one  of  the  divinest  features  in  the  Economy 
of  Providence.  It  was  for  the  wisest  ends  that  the  Crea- 
tor ordained,  that  as  the  offspring  of  each,  "  after  its 
kind,"  should  be  brought  into  life,  —  then,  in  that  self- 
same hour,  without  volition  or  forethought  on  their  part, 
—  there  should  flame  up  in  the  breast  of  the  parent,  as 
from  the  innermost  recesses  of  nature,  a  new  and  over- 
mastering impulse,  —  an  impulse  which  enters  the  soul 


208  THE   WORK   OP   EDUCATION. 

like  a  strong  invader,  conquering,  revolutionizing,  trans- 
forming old  pains  into  pleasures  and  old  pleasures  into 
pains,  until  its  great  mission  should  be  accomplished. 
On  this  link  the  very  existence  of  the  races  was  suspended. 
Hence  Divine  foreknowledge  made  it  strong  enough  to 
sustain  them  all ;  —  for  in  vain  would  the  fountain  of 
life  have  been  opened  in  the  maternal  breast,  if  a  deeper 
fountain  of  love  had  not  been  opened  in  her  heart. 

Would  you  more  adequately  conceive  what  an  insup- 
portable wretchedness  and  torment  the  rearing  of  children 
would  be,  if,  instead  of  being  rendered  delightful  by  these 
endearments  of  parental  love,  it  had  been  merely  com- 
manded by  law,  and  enforced  by  pains  and  penalties  ;  — 
would  you,  I  say,  more  fully  conceive  this  difference  ; 
—  contrast  the  feelings  of  a  slave-breeder,  (a  wretch  ab- 
horred by  God  and  man  !)  contrast,  I  say,  the  feelings  of 
a  slave-breeder,  who  raises  children  for  the  market,  with 
the  feelings  of  the  slave-mother,  in  whose  person  this 
sacred  law  of  parental  love  is  outraged.  If  one  of  these 
doomed  children,  from  what  cause  soever,  becomes  puny 
and  sickly,  and  gives  good  promise  of  defeating  the  cu- 
pidity that  called  it  into  life,  with  what  bitter  emotions 
does  the  master  behold  it !  He  thinks  of  investments 
sunk,  of  unmerchantable  stock  on  hand,  of  the  profit-and- 
loss  account ;  and  perhaps  he  is  secretly  meditating 
schemes  for  preventing  further  expenditures  by  bringing 
the  hopeless  concern  to  a  violent  close.  But  what  an  in- 
expressible joy  does  the  abused  mother  find  in  watching 
over  and  caressing  it,  and  cheating  the  hostile  hours  ;  — 
and,  (for  such  is  the  impartiality  of  nature,)  if  she  can 
beguile  it  of  one  pain,  or  win  one  note  of  gladness  from  its 
sorrow-stricken  frame,  her  dusky  bosom  thrills  with  as  keen 
a  rapture  as  ever  dilated  the  breast  of  a  royal  mother,  when, 
beneath  a  canopy  and  within  curtains  of  silk  and  gold, 
she  nursed  the  heir  of  a  hundred  kings. 


THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  209 

Iii  civilized  and  Christianized  man,  this  natural  instinct 
is  exalted  into  a  holy  sentiment.  At  first,  it  is  true,  there 
springs  up  this  blind  passion  of  parental  love,  yearning 
for  the  good  of  the  child,  delighted  by  its  pleasures,  tor- 
tured by  its  pains.  But  this  vehement  impulse,  strong  as 
it  is,  is  not  left  to  do  its  work  alone.  It  summons  and 
supplicates  all  the  nobler  faculties  of  the  soul  to  become 
its  counsellors  and  allies.  It  invokes  the  aid  of  con- 
science ;  and  conscience  urges  to  do  all  and  suffer  all,  for 
the  child's  welfare.  For  every  default,  conscience  ex 
postulates,  rebukes,  mourns,  threatens,  chastises.  That 
is  selfishness,  and  not  conscience,  in  the  parent,  which 
says  to  the  child,  "  You  owe  your  being  and  your  capaci- 
ties to  me."  Conscience  makes  the  parent  say,  "  I  owe 
my  being  and  my  capacities  to  you.  It  is  I  who  have 
struck  out  a  spark  which  is  to  burn  with  celestial  efful- 
gence, or  glare  with  baleful  fires.  It  is  I  who  have 
evoked,  out  of  nothingness,  unknown  and  incalculable 
capacities  of  happiness  and  of  misery  ;  and  all  that  can 
be  done  by  mortal  means  is  mine  to  do." 

Nor  does  this  love  of  offspring  stop  with  conscience. 
It  enlists,  in  its  behalf,  the  general  feeling  of  benevolence, 
—  benevolence,  that  god-like  sentiment  which  rejoices  in 
the  joys  and  suffers  in  the  sufferings  of  others.  The  soul 
of  the  truly  benevolent  man  does  not  seem  to  reside  much 
in  its  own  body.  Its  life,  to  a  great  extent,  is  the  mere 
reflex  of  the  lives  of  others.  It  migrates  into  their 
bodies,  and,  identifying  its  existence  with  their  existence, 
finds  its  own  happiness  in  increasing  and  prolonging  their 
pleasures,  in  extinguishing  or  solacing  their  pains.  And 
of  all  places  into  which  the  whole  heart  of  benevolence 
ever  migrates,  it  is  in  the  child,  where  it  finds  the  readiest 
welcome,  and  where  it  loves  best  to  prolong  its  residence. 

So  the   voice    of    another    sentiment,  —  a    sentiment 

VOL.  I.  14 


210  THE   WORK   OP   EDUCATION. 

whose  commands  are  more  authoritative  than  those  of 
any  other  which  ever  startles  the  slumbering  faculties 
from  their  guilty  repose,  —  I  mean  the  religious  senti- 
ment, the  sense  of  duty  to  God,  —  this,  too,  comes  in  aid 
of  the  parental  affection  ;  and  it  appeals  to  the  whole 
nature,  in  language  awful  as  that  which  made  the  camp 
of  the  Israelites  tremble  at  the  foot  of  Sinai.  This  sense  of 
duty  to  God  compels  the  parent  to  contemplate  the  child 
in  his  moral  and  religious  relations.  It  says,  "  However 
different  you  may  now  be  from  your  child,  —  you  strong, 
and  he  weak  ;  you  learned,  and  he  ignorant ;  your  mind 
capacious  of  the  mighty  events  of  the  past  and  the 
future,  and  he  alike  ignorant  of  yesterday  and  to-morrow, 
—  yet,  in  a  few  short  years,  all  this  difference  will  be  lost, 
and  one  of  the  greatest  remaining  differences  between 
yourself  and  him  will  be  that  which  your  own  conduct 
towards  him  shall  have  caused  or  permitted.  If,  then, 
God  is  Truth,  —  if  God  is  Love,  —  teach  the  child  above 
all  things  to  seek  for  Truth,  and  to  abound  in  Love." 

So  much,  then,  my  friends,  is  done,  in  the  common 
and  established  course  of  nature,  for  the  welfare  of  our 
children.  Nature  supplies  a  perennial  force,  unexhausted, 
inexhaustible,  re-appearing  whenever  and  wherever  the 
parental  relation  exists.  We,  then,  who  are  engaged  in 
the  sacred  cause  of  education,  are  entitled  to  look  upon 
all  parents  as  having  given  hostages  to  our  cause ;  and, 
just  as  soon  as  we  can  make  them  see  the  true  relation 
in  which  they  and  their  children  stand  to  this  cause,  they 
will  become  advocates  for  its  advancement,  more  ardent 
and  devoted  than  ourselves.  "We  hold  every  parent  by  a 
bond  more  strong  and  faithful  than  promises  or  oaths,  — - 
by  a  Heaven-established  relationship,  which  no  power  on 
earth  can  dissolve.  Would  parents  furnish  us  with  a 
record  of  their  secret  consciousness,  how  large  a  portion 


THE  WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  211 

of  those  solemn  thoughts  and  emotions,  which  throng  the 
mind  in  the  solitude  of  the  night-watches,  and  fill  up 
their  hours  of  anxious  contemplation,  would  be  found  to 
relate  to  the  welfare  of  their  offspring !  Doubtless  the 
main  part  of  their  most  precious  joys  comes  from  the 
present  or  prospective  well-being  of  their  children  ;  —  and 
oh !  how  often  would  they  account  all  gold  as  dross,  and 
fame  as  vanity,  and  life  as  nothing,  could  they  bring  back 
the  look  of  the  cradle's  innocence  upon  the  coffined 
reprobate  ! 

With  some  parents,  of  course,  these  pleasures  and  pains 
constitute  a  far  greater  share  of  the  good  or  ill  of  life 
than  with  others  ;  —  and  with  mothers  generally  far  more 
than  with  fathers.  We  have  the  evidence  of  this  superior 
attachment  of  the  mother,  in  those  supernatural  energies 
which  she  will  put  forth  to  rescue  her  child  from  danger ; 
we  know  it  by  the  vigils  and  fasting  she  will  endure  to 
save  it  from  the  pangs  of  sickness,  or  to  ward  off  the 
shafts  of  death ;  —  when,  amid  all  the  allurements  of  the 
world,  her  eye  is  fastened,  and  her  heart  dwells  upon  but 
one  spot  in  it ;  we  know  it  by  her  agonies,  when,  at  last, 
she  consigns  her  child  to  an  early  grave  ;  we  know  it  by 
the  tear  which  fills  her  eye,  when,  after  the  lapse  of  years, 
some  stranger  repeats,  by  chance,  its  beloved  name  ;  and 
we  know  it  by  the  crash  and  ruin  of  the  intellect  some- 
times produced  by  the  blow  of  bereavement ;  —  all  these 
are  signatures  written  by  the  finger  of  God  upon  human 
nature  itself,  by  which  we  know  that  parents  are  con- 
stituted and  predestined  to  be  the  friends  of  education. 
They  will,  they  must  be  its  friends,  as  soon  as  increasing 
intelligence  shall  have  demonstrated  to  them  the  indis- 
soluble relation  which  exists  between  Education  and  Hap- 
piness. 


212  THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION. 

I  have  now  spoken,  my  friends,  of  what  is  done  for  us, 
in  the  accustomed  course  of  nature  and  providence,  as  it 
regards  the  well-being  of  our  children.  But  here  I  come 
to  the  point  of  divergence.  Here  I  must  speak  of  OUR 
part  of  the  work ;  of  those  duties  which  the  Creator  has 
devolved  upon  ourselves.  Here,  therefore,  it  becomes 
my  duty  to  expose  the  greatest  of  all  mistakes,  committed 
in  regard  to  the  greatest  of  all  subjects,  and  followed  by 
proportionate  calamities. 

Two  grand  qualifications  are  equally  necessary  in  the 
education  of  children,  — Love  and  Knowledge.  Without 
love,  every  child  would  be  regarded  as  a  nuisance,  and 
cast  away  as  soon  as  born.  Without  knowledge,  love 
will  ruin  every  child.  Nature  supplies  the  love  ;  but  she 
does  not  supply  the  knowledge.  The  love  is  spontaneous ; 
the  knowledge  is  to  be  acquired  by  study  and  toil,  by  the 
most  attentive  observation  and  the  profoundest  reflection. 
Here,  then,  lies  the  fatal  error :  —  parents  rest  contented 
with  the  feeling  of  love ;  they  do  not  devote  themselves 
to  the  acquisition  of  that  knowledge  which  is  necessary 
to  guide  it.  Year  after  year,  thousands  and  tens  of 
thousands  indulge  the  delightful  sentiment,  but  never 
spend  an  hour  in  studying  the  conditions  which  are  in- 
dispensable to  its  gratification. 

In  regard  to  the  child's  physical  condition,  —  its  growth, 
and  health,  and  length  of  life,  —  these  depend,  in  no  in- 
considerable degree,  on  the  health  and  self-treatment  of 
the  mother  before  its  birth.  After  birth,  they  depend 
not  only  on  the  vitality  and  temperature  of  the  air  it 
breathes,  on  dress,  and  diet,  and  exercise,  but  on  certain 
proportions  and  relations  which  these  objects  bear  to  each 
other.  Now  the  tenderest  parental  love,  —  a  love  which 
burns,  like  incense  upon  an  altar,  for  an  idolized  child, 
for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  or  for  half  a  century, —  will 


THE  WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  213 

never  teach  the  mother  that  there  are  different  ingredi- 
ents in  the  air  we  breathe,  —  that  one  of  them  sustains 
life,  that  another  of  them  destroys  life,  — that  every  breath 
we  draw  changes  the  life-sustaining  element  into  the  life- 
destroying  one ;  and  therefore  that  the  air  which  is  to  be 
respired  must  be  perpetually  renewed.  Love  will  never 
instruct  the  mother  what  materials  or  textures  of  cloth- 
ing have  the  proper  conducting  or  non-conducting  quali- 
ties for  different  climates,  or  for  different  seasons  of  the 
year.  Love  is  no  chemist  or  physiologist,  and  therefore 
will  never  impart  to  the  mother  any  knowledge  of  the 
chemical  or  vital  qualities  of  different  kinds  of  food,  of 
the  nature  or  functions  of  the  digestive  organs,  of  the 
susceptibilities  of  the  nervous  system,  nor,  indeed,  of  any 
other  of  the  various  functions  on  which  health  and  life 
depend.  Hence,  the  most  affectionate  but  ignorant  mo- 
ther, during  the  cold  nights  of  winter,  will  visit  the 
closet-like  bed-chamber  of  her  darling,  calk  up  every 
crevice  and  cranny,  smother  him  with  as  many  integu- 
ments as. incase  an  Egyptian  mummy,  close  the  door  of 
his  apartment,  and  thus  inflict  upon  him  a  consumption, 
—  born  of  love.  Or  she  will  wrap  nice  comforters  about 
his  neck,  until,  in  some  glow  of  perspiration,  he  flings 
them  off,  and  dies  of  the  croup.  Or  she  will  consult  the 
infinite  desires  of  a  child's  appetite,  instead  of  the  finite 
powers  of  his  stomach,  and  thus  pamper  him,  until  he 
languishes  into  a  life  of  suffering  and  imbecility,  or  becomes 
stupefied  and  besotted  by  one  of  sensual  indulgence. 

A  mother  has  a  first-born  child,  whom  she  dotes  upon 
to  distraction,  but,  through  some  fatal  error  in  its  man- 
agement, occasioned  by  her  ignorance,  it  dies  in  the  first, 
beautiful,  budding  hour  of  childhood,  —  nipped  like  the 
sweet  blossoms  of  spring  by  an  untimely  frost.  Another 
is  committed  to  her  charge,  and  in  her  secret  heart  she 


214  THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION. 

says,  "  I  will  love  this  better  than  the  first."  But  it  is 
not  better  love  that  the  child  needs ;  it  is  more  knowl- 
edge. 

It  is  the  vast  field  of  ignorance  pertaining  to  these 
subjects,  in  which  quackery  thrives  and  fattens.  No  one 
who  knows  any  thing  of  the  organs  and  functions  of  the 
human  system,  and  of  the  properties  of  those  objects  in 
nature  to  which  that  system  is  related,  can  hear  a  quack 
descant  upon  the  miraculous  virtues  of  his  nostrums,  or 
can  read  his  advertisements  in  the  newspapers,  —  wherein, 
fraudulently  towards  man,  and  impiously  towards  God, 
he  promises  to  sell  an  "  Elixir  of  Life,"  or  "  The  Balm 
of  Immortality,"  or  "  Resurection  Pills,"  —  without  con- 
tempt for  his  ignorance,  or  detestation  of  his  guilt.  Could 
the  quack  administer  his  nostrums  to  the  great  enemy, 
Death,  then,  indeed,  we  might  expect  to  live  forever. 

And  what  is  the  consequence  of  this  excess  of  love  and 
lack  of  knowledge  on  the  part  of  the  parent  ?  More  than 
one-fifth  part,  —  almost  a  fourth  part,  —  of  all  the  children 
who  are  born,  die  before  attaining  the  age  of  one  year. 
A  fifth  part  have  died  before  a  seventieth  part  of  the  term 
of  existence  has  been  reached !  What  would  the  farmer 
or  the  shepherd  say,  if  he  should  lose  one-fifth  part  of 
his  lambs  or  his  kids  before  a  seventieth  part  of  their 
natural  term  of  life  had  been  reached  ?  And  before  the 
age  of  five  years,  more  than  a  third  part  of  all  who  are 
born  of  our  race  have  returned  again  to  the  earth,  — 
the  great  majority  of  them  having  died  of  that  most  fatal 
and  wide-spread  of  all  epidemics,  —  unenlightened  pa- 
rental love.  What  an  inconceivable  amount  of  anxiety 
for  the  health  and  life  of  children  might  he  prevented ; 
how  much  of  the  agony  of  bereavement  might  be  saved ; 
how  much  joy  might  be  won  from  beholding  childhood's 
rosy  beauty  and  bounding  health,  if  parents,  especially 


THE  WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  215 

mothers,  would  study  such  works  as  those  of  Doctor 
Combe,  on  the  Principles  of  Physiology,  as  applied  to 
Health  and  Education,  and  on  Digestion  and  Dietetics ; 
of  Doctor  Brigham,  on  Mental  Excitement ;  or  Miss  Sedg- 
wick's  Means  and  Ends ;  and,  (if  they  are  to  stand  at  all 
in  the  way  of  mastering  this  knowledge,)  throw  Cooper, 
and  Bulwer,  and  Maryatt,  and  Boz,  into  the  grate,  or 
under  the  fore-stick  ! 

When  we  ascend  from  the  management  of  the  body  to 
the  direction  and  culture  of  the  intellectual  and  moral 
nature,  the  calamitous  consequences  of  ignorance  are  as 
much  greater,  as  spirit  is  more  valuable  than  matter,  — 
because  the  mischief  wrought  by  unskilfulness  is  always 
in  proportion  to  the  value  of  the  material  wrought  upon. 
In  regard  to  the  child's  advancement  in  knowledge  and 
virtue,  with  what  spontaneity  and  vigor  do  the  parental 
impulses  spring  up !  They  seek,  they  yearn,  they  pray 
for  his  welfare,  for  his  worldly  renown,  for  his  moral  ex- 
cellence, —  that  he  may  grow,  not  only  in  stature,  but  in 
favor  with  God  and  man.  These  parental  affections 
watch  over  him;  they  stand  like  an  angelic  guard  around 
him;  they  agonize  for  his  growth  in  the  right,  for  his 
redemption  from  the  wrong.  But  all  these  affections  are 
blind  impulses.  They  do  not  know,  they  cannot  devise 
a  single  measure,  whereby  to  accomplish  the  object  they 
would  die  to  attain.  Love  of  children  has  no  knowledge 
of  the  four  different  temperaments,  —  the  fibrous,  the 
sanguine,  the  nervous,  the  lymphatic,  —  or  of  the  differ- 
ent combinations  of  them,  and  how  different  a  course  of 
treatment  each  one  of  them,  or  the  predominance  of  either, 
demands.  Love  of  children  does  not  know  how  to  com- 
mand, in  order  to  insure  the  habit  of  prompt  and  willing 
obedience,  —  obedience,  in  the  first  place,  to  parental 
authority,  afterwards  to  the  dictates  of  conscience  when 


216  THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION. 

that  faculty  is  developed,  and  to  the  laws  of  God  when 
those  laws  are  made  known  to  them.  Love  of  children 
does  not  know  in  what  manner,  or  in  what  measure,  to 
inflict  punishment;  or  how  to  reconcile  inflexibility  of- 
principle  with  changes  in  circumstances.  It  does  not 
understand  the  favorable  moments  when  the  mind  is  fitted 
to  receive  the  seeds  of  generous,  noble,  devout  sentiments  ; 
or  when,  on  the  other  hand,  not  even  the  holiest  princi- 
ples should  be  mentioned.  All  this  invaluable,  indispen- 
sable knowledge  comes  from  reading,  from  study,  from 
observation,  from  reflection,  from  forethought ;  —  it  never 
comes,  it  never  can  come,  from  the  blind  instinct  or  feel- 
ing of  parental  love.  Hence,  as  we  all  know,  those  pa- 
rents do  not  train  up  their  children  best  who  love  them 
most.  Nay,  if  the  love  be  not  accompanied  with  knowl- 
edge, it  precipitates  the  ruin  of  its  object.  This  result 
can  be  explained  in  a  single  word.  The  child  has  appetites 
and  desires,  without  knowledge.  These,  if  unrestrained, 
all  tend  to  excess.  They  demand  too  much  of  food,  dress, 
liberty,  authority,  and  so  forth.  The  child  has  a  throng 
of  selfish  propensities,  which,  if  unbalanced  by  the  higher 
sentiments,  prompt  to  acts  of  disrespect,  pride,  cruelty, 
injustice.  Now  the  dictate  of  unintelligent  love  in  the 
parent  is,  to  assist  the  child  in  realizing  all  its  wants. 
Hence  the  parent's  power  supplies  the  child's  weakness 
in  procuring  the  means  for  gratifying  its  excessive  desires; 
and  thus,  that  love  which  nature  designed  as  its  blessing, 
becomes  its  curse.  What  intelligent  observer  has  not 
seen  many  a  parent  run,  at  the  first  call  of  a  child,  re- 
move all  obstructions  from  his  path,  and  hasten  his  slow 
steps  onward  to  ruin  ! 

Solomon  says,  —  explicitly  and  without  qualification, 
—  "  Train  up  a  child  in  the  way  he  should  go,  and  when 
he  is  old,  HE  WILL  NOT  DEPART  FROM  IT."  Now,  if  this  be 


THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  217 

true,  then  it  is  a  short  and  a  clear  syllogism,  that  if  men 
do  depart  from  the  way  in  which  they  should  go,  they 
were  not,  as  children,  trained  up  in  it.  Or,  take  the  say- 
ing only  as  a  general  proposition,  —  one  to  be  applied  to 
the  great  majority  of  cases,  —  and  it  equally  follows  that 
if  men,  generally-,  do  depart  from  the  way  in  which  they 
should  go,  then,  generally,  they  were  not  trained  up  in 
it.  Under  the  loosest  construction,  Solomon  must  have 
meant,  that  there  are  powers,  faculties,  instrumentalities, 
graciously  vouchsafed  by  Heaven  to  man,  by  which,  if 
discovered,  and  applied  to  the  processes  of  education, 
children,  generally,  when  they  become  men,  will  go  and 
do,  and  love  to  go  and  do,  as  they  ought  to  go  and  do. 
No  latitudinarianisni  of  interpretation  can  escape  this 
inference. 

And  yet,  with  this  authority  from  the  Scriptures  before 
us,  as  to  what  may  be  done,  how  often  does  the  miscon- 
duct of  children  bring  down  the  gray  hairs  of  parents 
with  sorrow  to  the  grave !  With  every  generation,  there 
re-appear  amongst  us,  the  arts  of  fraud,  the  hand  of  vio- 
lence, and  the  feet  that  are  swift  to  shed  blood.  Nor  are 
flagitious  deeds  and  abandoned  lives  confined  to  families 
alone,  where  the  treatment  of  children,  by  their  parents, 
is  characterized  by  gross  ignorance  and  heathenism. 
Such  cases,  it  is  true,  abound,  and  in  such  numbers,  too, 
as  almost  to  laugh  to  scorn  our  claims,  as  a  people,  to 
civilization  and  Christianity,  But  how  often  do  we  see 
children  issuing  from  the  abodes  of  rational  and  pious 
parents,  where  a  burning  love,  a  hallowed  zeal,  a  life- 
consuming  toil,  have  been  expended  upon  them,  —  of 
parents  who  have  bedewed  the  nightly  pillow  with  tears, 
and,  morning  and  evening,  have  wrestled  with  the  angel 
of  mercy  to  bring  down  blessings  upon  their  heads, — 
how  often  do  we  see  these  children  bursting  madly  forth, 


218  THE   WORK   OF  EDUCATION. 

and  rushing  straight  onward  to  some  precipice  of  destruc 
tion  ;  and  though  parents  and  kindred  and  friends  pursue, 
and  strive  to  intercept  them  ere  they  reach  the  brink  of 
ruin  ;  and  gather  in  long  array  and  stand  with  outstretched 
arms  and  imploring  voice,  to  arrest  their  fatal  career, 

—  yet,  gathering  strength  and  swiftness,  the  victims  rush 
by,  and  plunge  into  the  abyss  of  perdition  !     Yet,  if  there 
is  any  truth  in  the  declaration  of  Solomon,  these  victims, 

—  at  least  most  of  them,  —  might  have  been  saved,  and 
would  have  been  saved,  had  the  knowledge  of  the  parents 
been  equal  to  their  love.     God  grant  that  in  saying  these 
things,  I  may  not  shoot  an  arrow  of  pain  through  any 
parent's  heart ;  —  still  more  fervently  do  I  say,  God  grant 
that  a  timely  consideration  of  these  truths  may  turn  aside 
the  arrows  of  pain  from  every  parental  breast ! 

The  instinctive  love  which  parents  feel  for  their  chil- 
dren is  only  one  of  a  large  class  of  natural  desires,  —  all 
of  which  are  subjected  to  the  same  conditions.  Nature, 
in  each  case,  supplies  the  desire,  but  she  leaves  it  to  us 
to  acquire  the  knowledge  which  is  necessary  to  guide  it. 
She  leaves  it  to  us  so  to  control  and  regulate  the  desire, 
that,  in  the  long-run,  it  may  receive  the  highest  amount 
of  gratification.  This  truth  is  susceptible  of  most  exten- 
sive illustration.  Time,  however,  will  allow  me  to  adduce 
only  a  few  analogies. 

All  men  are  born  with  a  desire  for  food,  but  they  are 
born  without  any  knowledge  of  agriculture,  or  of  the  arts 
or  implements  of  the  chase,  by  means  of  which  food  can 
be  procured.  The  lowest  grade  of  savages  feel  a  natural 
hunger  or  thirst  as  keen  as  that  of  the  .highest  orders  of 
civilized  man.  But  the  savage  has  no  knowledge  how  to 
rear  the  luxuries  of  the  garden,  the  orchard,  the  grain- 
field,  the  pasture,  or  the  fold.  Hence  he  subsists  upon 
such  uncooked  roots  or  unsodden  flesh  as  can  be  found 


THE   WOEK   OP  EDUCATION.  219 

or  caught  in  the  neighborhood  of  his  cave  or  wigwam. 
But  knowledge  —  an  excited  and  cultivated  intellect  — 
has  been  at  work  for  civilized  man  ;  and,  in  obedience 
to  its  command,  the  earth  teems  with  delicious  fruits,  the 
valleys  abound  with  fatness,  the  ocean  becomes  tributary  ; 
in  fine,  all  the  fields  of  nature  are  converted  into  one 
great  laboratory  to  prepare  sweets  and  fragrance  and 
flavor  for  his  voluptuous  table.  We  derive  the  appetite, 
perfect  and  full-grown,  from  our  Maker  ;  but  we  are  left 
to  discover  for  ourselves  the  means  and  processes  by  which 
this  appetite  can  best  be  gratified.  The  result  of  all  our 
knowledge  on  this  subject  is  expressed  in  the  common 
proverb,  that  the  temperate  man  is  the  greatest  epicure ; 
—  that  is,  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  gratification 
from  eating  and  drinking  will  be  enjoyed  by  the  temperate 
man ;  —  a  conclusion,  the  very  opposite  of  that  which  the 
appetite  itself  suggests. 

So  in  regard  to  a  love  of  beauty.  Nature  confers  this 
sentiment,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  upon  all  the  race. 
But  the  cultivation  of  it,  the  preparation  of  objects  to 
gratify  it,  —  architecture,  painting,  sculpture,  —  these 
come  through  art  and  genius,  by  the  application  of  a 
knowledge  of  our  own  acquiring.  The  Indian  bridegroom, 
stung  with  love,  and  seeking  to  beautify  the  tawny  idol 
of  his  affections,  besmears  her  face  with  red  or  yellow 
ochre ;  he  tattoos  her  skin,  and  for  jewels  suspends  a 
string  of  bears'  claws  over  her  sooty  bosom.  In  conse- 
quence of  possessing  a  somewhat  higher  knowledge,  our 
sense  of  beauty  is  elevated  perhaps  two  or  three  degrees 
above  that  of  the  barbarian.  Hence  we  seek  to  clothe 
a  beloved  object  with  fine  linen,  and  Tyrian  purple,  and 
silken  stuffs  of  colors  rich  and  costly  ;  and  instead  of  the 
claws  of  bears,  we  adorn  her  with  carcanets  of  pearl  and 
diamonds.  When  mankind  shall  be  blessed  with  that 


220  THE   WORK   OF  EDUCATION. 

purer  and  higher  knowledge  which  shall  identify  the  types 
of  beauty  with  those  of  excellence,  then  will  our  ideal, 
advancing  with  the  advancing  light,  demand,  as  the  price 
of  its  admiration,  richer  ornaments  than  Ophir  or  Gol- 
conda  can  supply  ;  —  it  will  demand  the  bloom  and  elas- 
ticity of  perfect  health,  manners  born  of  artlessness  and 
enthusiasm,  and  a  countenance  so  inscribed  with  the 
records  of  pure  thoughts  and  benevolent  deeds,  as  to  be 
one  beaming,  holy  hieroglyph  of  love  and  duty.  Then 
will  our  exalted  sense  of  beauty  repel  the  aggression  of 
foreign  ornaments. 

So  the  love  of  property,  to  which  for  another  purpose 
I  have  before  referred,  is  common  to  all.  There  is  an 
inborn  desire  for  the  conveniences,  the  comforts,  the  ele- 
gances, the  independence,  which  property  confers.  But 
men  are  not  born  with  one  particle  of  knowledge  respect- 
ing the  means  or  instruments  by  which  property  can  be 
acquired.  And  we  all  know  how  certainly  a  man,  who 
acts  from  the  blind  desire,  without  any  knowledge  of  the 
appropriate  means,  brings  ruin  upon  himself  and  family. 
How  much  knowledge  is  requisite,  what  long  courses  of 
previous  study  and  apprenticeship  are  demanded,  to  fit 
men  for  the  learned  professions,  for  commerce,  manufac- 
tures and  the  mechanic  arts  !  Who  would  consign  his 
goods  to  a  merchant  who  knows  nothing  of  the  laws  of 
trade,  of  demand  and  supply,  of  eligible  markets,  seasons, 
and  so  forth  ?  What  a  variety  and  extent  of  preliminary 
knowledge  respecting  modes  and  processes  must  be  ob- 
tained, before  the  fabrics  of  the  artisan  or  the  manufac- 
turer can  be  produced.  Suppose  a  young  man  of  twenty 
or  twenty-five  years  of  age,  to  begin  to  rear  a  family  of 
children.  Suppose  him,  at  the  same  time,  to  inherit  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  in  money.  He  seeks  to  gratify 
his  parental  instinct,  by  educating  his  children ;  and  he 


THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  221 

seeks  also  to  enlarge  his  estate,  by  purchasing  and  carry- 
ing on  a  manufacturing  establishment ;  —  but  neither  on 
the  subject  of  education  nor  of  manufactures,  has  he  ever 
thought,  or  read,  or  sought  instruction.  How  long,  think 
you,  my  friends,  would  it  be,  before  the  most  perfect 
machinery  ever  made  by  human  skill  would  be  wrenched, 
or  crushed,  or  torn  in  pieces,  under  his  ignorant  manage- 
ment; the  best  of  cottons  or  woollens  spoiled,  and  his 
whole  fortune  dissipated  ?  Without  some  knowledge  of 
the  art  of  manufacturing,  he  would  hardly  know  which 
way  to  turn  the  wheels  of  his  machinery  ;  he  would  not 
know  in  what  quantities  to  feed  it,  or  in  what  order  and 
succession  to  carry  the  material  from  part  to  part.  With- 
out knowledge,  also,  he  will  conduct  the  education  of 
his  children  quite  as  ruinously  as  his  pecuniary  invest- 
ments. If  he  is  unacquainted  with  the  different  temper- 
aments which  his  children  may  have,  —  the  lymphatic, 
the  sanguine,  the  nervous,  the  fibrous,  —  he  will  make 
as  great  mistakes  in  regard  to  diet  and  exercise,  to  intel- 
lectual and  moral  training,  to  mental  stimulus  or  restraint, 
as  though  he  should  attempt  to  weave  hemp  upon  a  silk- 
loom.  If  he  does  not  know  in  what  order  nature  develops 
the  faculties,  one  after  another,  he  will  commit  the  same 
error,  as  though  he  should  put  the  raw  material,  in  the 
first  instance,  on  the  finishing  machine,  and  carry  it,  last 
of  all,  through  the  preliminary  stages.  If  you  will  allow 
me  to  carry  on  the  comparison,  I  will  add,  that,  to  feed 
machinery,  in  any  stage  of  the  work,  with  such  an  over- 
quantity  of  stock  as  clogs  and  chokes  it,  is  only  the  paral- 
lel of  that  common  misjudgment  which  gives  to  children 
longer  lessons  than  they  can  learn.  So,  to  ply  the  minds 
of  children  with  improper  motives,  in  order  to  accelerate 
their  progress,  is  a  far  greater  mistake  than  it  would  be 
to  drive  machinery  by  doubling  the  head  of  water  or  the 


222  THE   WOEK   OF   EDUCATION. 

power  of  steam,  until  every  shaft  should  be  twisted, 
every  baud  stretched,  and  every  pinion  loosened,  in  it. 
Such  a  silly  adventurer  would  bring  depravation  and  ruin 
alike  upon  the  mechanical  and  the  educational  depart- 
ments of  his  enterprise. 

Here  lies  the  great  and  the  only  difference  between  the 
cases.  When  material  fabrics  or  commodities  are  spoiled 
by  a  bungler,  —  when  ore  is  turned  into  dross  in  the 
smelting,  when  garments  are  ruined  in  the  making,  when 
a  house  will  not  stand,  or  a  ship  will  not  sail,  —  we  see 
what  mischief  has  been  done,  what  materials  have  been 
wasted.  We  understand  enough  of  the  subject  to  know 
what  should  have  been  done,  and  to  compare  it  with 
what  has  been  done.  But  no  reflecting  man  can  doubt, 
for  a  moment,  that  the  minds  of  our  children, —  those 
treasures  of  inestimable  value,  —  are  corrupted  and  de- 
vastated by  every  ignorant  parent,  in  a  degree  at  least 
equal  to  what  the  most  precious  earthly  materials  would 
be,  in  the  hands  of  the  rudest  workman. 

But  it  is  not  every  child,  nor  even  a  majority  of  chil- 
dren, who,  with  any  propriety,  can  be  compared  to  mechan- 
ical structures,  or  to  those  pliant  and  ductile  materials 
that  are  wrought  into  beautiful  forms  by  the  skill  of  the 
artisan.  Children  formed  in  the  prodigality  of  nature, 
gifted  to  exert  strong  influences  upon  the  race,  are  not 
passive  ;  —  they  are  endued  with  vital  and  efficient  forces 
of  their  own.  Their  capacious  and  fervid  souls  were 
created  to  melt  and  recast  opinions,  codes,  communities, 
as  crude  ores  are  melted  and  purified  in  the  furnace.  To 
the  sensitive  and  resilient  natures  of  such  children,  an 
ungentle  touch  is  a  sting ;  a  hot  word  is  a  living  coal. 
By  mere  innate,  spontaneous  force,  their  vehement  spirits 
rise  to  such  a  pitch  of  exaltation,  that,  if  all  bland  and 
sedative  arts  do  not  assuage  them,  if  all  wisdom  does  not 


THE   WOEK   OF   EDUCATION.  223 

guide  them,  they  become  scourges  instead  of  blessings 
to  mankind.  Such  natures  are  among  the  richest  gifts 
of  Heaven  to  the  race,  —  created  for  great  emergencies 
and  enterprises,  always  finding  or  making  occasions  for 
deeds  of  immortality  ;  —  like  Moses,  scorning  the  power 
of  kings  and  giving  deliverance  to  a  captive  nation ;  or 
like  Paul,  speaking  undaunted  in  the  face  of  courts,  and 
making  potentates  tremble.  Yet  how  few  parents  know, 
or  have  ever  sought  to  know,  how  to  manage  these  impet- 
uous and  fiery  souls  !  How  many  parents  regard  physi- 
cal strength  as  the  only  antagonist  and  corrective  of 
spiritual  strength,  —  ignorant  of  the  truth  that,  to  a  great 
extent,  they  are  incommensurable  quantities.  How  few 
reflect  that  a  child  may  be  as  much  stronger  than  the 
parents  in  his  passions,  as  the  parents  are  stronger  than 
the  child,  in  their  limbs ;  that  wisdom  in  them,  therefore, 
is  the  only  true  correlative  of  will  in  him;  and  that 
prudence  and  discretion  in  the  arrangement  of  circum- 
stances beforehand,  are,  in  thousands  of  cases,  the  effectual 
preventive  of  the  necessity  of  punishment  afterwards. 
If  a  man  rashly  undertakes  to  use  materials  which  are 
liable  to  spontaneous  combustion,  without  any  knowledge 
of  the  conditions  which  are  sure  to  generate  the  flame, 
ought  he  to  complain  of  the  laws  of  nature,  or  of  his 
own  ignorance,  when  he  suffers  a  conflagration  ?  We 
know  that  a  man  of  intelligence  and  circumspection  will 
spend  a  life  in  the  manufacture  or  the  transportation 
of  gunpowder,  without  an  accident ;  while  a  stupid 
clodpoll  will  celebrate  his  first  day's  service  by  an  ex- 
plosion. 

My  friends,  is  it  not  incredible  that  any  parent  should 
ever  attempt  to  manage  and  direct  that  mighty  force, — 
a  child's  soul,  —  without  having  first  sought  to  acquire 
some  knowledge  of  its  various  attributes,  of  its  upward 


224  THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION. 

and  its  downward  tending  faculties,  of  the  reciprocal  re- 
lations existing  between  it  and  the  world  into  which  it 
has  been  brought,  and  of  the  manner  in  which  its  marvel- 
lous capacities  may  be  developed  into  harmony  and  beauty-, 
and  sanctified  into  holiness  ?  Look  at  that  every-day  re- 
ality in  life,  —  which,  were  it  not  so  familiar,  we  should 
pronounce  the  most  delightful  sight  in  this  sorrowing 
world,  —  that  of  a  young  mother  clasping  her  first-born 
infant  to  her  breast,  while  the  light  and  shade  that  cross 
her  countenance  reveal  the  infinite  hopes  and  fears  that 
alternate  within.  What  is  there  of  ease,  pleasure,  luxury, 
fortune,  health,  life,  that  she  would  not  barter,  could  she 
win  a  sign  from  heaven,  that  her  child  should  grow  to 
manhood,  and  as  it  should  wax  strong  in  body,  should 
grow  also  in  favor  with  God  and  man  ?  Yet,  was  there 
any  thing  in  her  own  education,  is  there  any  thing  in  her 
daily  pursuits  in  life,  or  in  the  tone  and  habits  of  society, 
which  lead  her  to  lay  hold  upon  the  promise,  that  if  she 
brings  up  her  child  in  the  way  he  should  go,  when  he  is 
old  he  WILL  NOT  depart  from  it  ?  If  the  hospitalities  of 
her  house  are  to  be  tendered  to  a  distinguished  guest,  — 
nay,  if  she  is  only  to  prepare  a  refection  of  cakes  for  a 
tea-party,  she  fails  not  to  examine  some  cookery-book,  or 
some  manuscript  recipe,  lest  she  should  convert  her  rich 
ingredients  into  unpalatable  compounds ;  but  without 
ever  having  read  one  book  on  the  subject  of  education, 
without  ever  having  reflected  one  hour  upon  this  great 
theme,  without  ever  having  sought  one  conversation  with 
an  intelligent  person  upon  it,  she  undertakes  so  to  mingle 
the  earthly  and  the  celestial  elements  of  instruction  for 
that  child's  soul,  that  he  shall  be  fitted  to  discharge  all 
duties  below,  and  to  enjoy  all  blessings  above.  When  the 
young  mother  has  occasion  to  work  the  initials  of  her 
name  upon  her  household  napery,  does  she  not  consult 


THE  WOKK   OF   EDUCATION.  225 

the  sampler,  prepared  in  her  juvenile  days,  that  every 
stitch  may  be  set  with  regularity  and  in  order  ?  'Yet  this 
same  mother  surrenders  herself  to  blind  ignorance  and 
chance  when  she  is  to  engrave  immortal  characters  upon 
the  eternal  tablets  of  the  soul.  To  embroider  an  earth- 
ly garment,  there  must  be  knowledge  and  skill ;  but 
neither  is  regarded  as  necessary  for  the  fit  adornment  of 
the  soul's  imperishable  vesture.  The  young  mother  seems 
to  think  she  has  done  her  whole  duty  to  her  child  when 
she  has  christened  it  George  Washington  Lafayette,  or 
Evelina  Henrietta  Augusta  ;  but  she  consults  neither  book 
nor  friends  to  know  by  what  hallowed  words  of  counsel 
and  of  impulse  she  can  baptize  it  into  a  life  of  wisdom  and 
of  holiness.  What  wonder  then,  what  wonder  then,  when 
children  grow  old,  that  they  should  disperse  in  all  ways, 
rather  than  walk  in  the  way  in  which  they  should  go  ? 

If  the  vehement,  but  blind  love  of  offspring,  which 
comes  by  nature,  is  not  enlightened  and  guided  by  knowl- 
edge, and  study,  and  reflection,  it  is  sure  to  defeat  its 
own  desires.  Hence,  the  frequency  and  the  significance 
of  such  expressions  as  are  used  by  plain,  rustic  people, 
of  strong  common  sense:  —  "  There  were  too  many  pea- 
cocks where  that  boy  was  brought  up  ; "  or,  "  The  silly 
girl  is  not  to  blame,  for  she  was  dolled  up,  from  a  doll  in 
the  cradle  to  a  doll  in  the  parlor."  All  children  have 
foolish  desires,  freaks,  caprices,  appetites,  which  they  have 
no  power  or  skill  to  gratify  ;  but  the  foolish  parent  sup- 
plies all  the  needed  skill,  time,  money,  to  gratify  them ; 
and  thus  the  greater  talent  and  resources  of  the  parent 
foster  the  propensities  of  the  child  into  excess  and  pre- 
dominance. The  parental  love  which  was  designed  by 
Heaven  to  be  the  guardian  angel  of  the  child,  is  thus 
transformed  into  a  cruel  minister  of  evil. 

Think,  my  friends,  for  one  moment,  of  the  marvellous 

VOL.  I.  15 


228  THE   WOEK   OF   EDUCATION. 

nature  with  which  we  have  been  endowed,  —  of  its  mani- 
fold and  diverse  capacities,  and  of  their  attributes  of 
infinite  expansion  and  duration.  Then  cast  a  rapid 
glance  over  this  magnificent  temple  of  the  universe  into 
which  we  have  been  brought.  The  same  Being  created 
both  by  His  omnipotence ;  and,  by  His  wisdom,  He  has 
adapted  the  dwelling-place  to  the  dweller.  The  exhaust- 
less  variety  of  natural  objects  by  which  we  are  sur- 
rounded ;  the  relations  of  the  family,  of  society,  and  of  the 
race;  the  adorable  perfections  of  the  Divine  mind, — 
these  are  means  for  the  development,  and  spheres  for  the 
activity,  and  objects  for  the  aspiration  of  the  immortal 
soul.  For  the  sustentation  of  our  physical  natures,  God 
has  created  the  teeming  earth,  and  tenanted  the  field 
and  the  forest,  the  ocean  and  the  air,  with  innumerable 
forms  of  life ;  and  He  has  said  to  us,  "  have  dominion  " 
over  them.  For  the  education  of  the  perceptive  intellect, 
there  have  been  provided  the  countless  multitude  and 
diversity  of  substances,  forms,  colors,  motions,  —  from  a 
drop  of  water,  to  the  ocean ;  from  the  tiny  crystal  that 
sparkles  upon  the  shore,  to  the  sun  that  blazes  in  the 
heavens,  and  the  sun-strewn  firmament.  For  the  educa- 
tion of  the  reflecting  intellect  we  have  the  infinite  relations 
of  discovered  and  undiscovered  sciences,  —  the  encyclo- 
paedias of  matter  and  of  spirit,  of  which  all  the  en- 
cyclopaedias of  man,  as  yet  extant,  are  but  the  alphabet. 
We  have  domestic  sympathies  looking  backwards,  around, 
and  forwards  ;  and  answering  to  these,  are  the  ties  of  filial, 
conjugal,  and  parental  relations.  Through  our  inborn 
sense  of  melody  and  harmony,  all  joyful  and  plaintive 
emotions  flow  out  into  spontaneous  music  ;  and,  not  friends 
and  kindred  only,  but  even  dead  nature  echoes  back  our 
sorrows  and  our  joys.  To  give  a  costless  delight  to  our 
sense  of  beauty,  we  have  the  variegated  landscape,  the 


THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  227 

rainbow,  the  ever-renewing  beauty  of  the  moon,  the 
glories  of  the  rising  and  the  setting  sun,  and  the  ineffable 
purity  and  splendor  of  that  celestial  vision  when  the 
northern  and  the  southern  auroras  shoot  up  from  the 
horizon,  and  overspread  the  vast  concave  with  their  many- 
colored  flame,  as  though  it  were  a  reflection  caught  from 
the  waving  banner  of  angels,  when  the  host  of  heaven 
rejoices  over  some  sinner  that  has  repented.  And  finally, 
for  the  amplest  development,  for  the  eternal  progress  of 
those  attributes  that  are  proper  to  man,  —  for  conscience, 
for  the  love  of  truth,  for  that  highest  of  all  emotions,  the 
love  and  adoration  of  our  Creator,  —  God,  in  his  un- 
searchable riches,  has  made  full  provision.  And  here,  on 
the  one  hand,  is  the  subject  of  education,  —  the  child, 
with  its  manifold  and  wonderful  powers  ;  —  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  this  height,  and  dopth,  and  boundlessness  of 
natural  and  of  spiritual  instrumentalities,  to  build  up  the 
nature  of  that  child  into  a  capacity  for  the  intellectual 
comprehension  of  the  universe,  and  into  a  spiritual  simi- 
litude to  its  Author.  And  who  are  they  that  lay  their 
rash  hands  upon  this  holy  work  ?  Where  or  when  have 
they  learned,  or  sought  to  learn,  to  look  at  the  unfolding 
powers  of  the  child's  soul,  and  to  see  what  it  requires, 
and  then  to  run  their  eye  and  hand  over  this  universe  of 
material  and  of  moral  agencies,  and  to  select  and  apply 
whatever  is  needed,  at  the  time  needed,  and  in  the  mea- 
sure needed  ?  Surely,  in  no  other  department  of  life  is 
knowledge  so  indispensable ;  surely,  in  no  other  is  it  so 
little  sought  for.  In  no  other  navigation  is  there  such 
danger  of  wreck  ;  in  no  other  is  there  such  blind  pilotage. 
But  the  parent  has  the  child  on  hand,  and  he  must 
educate  and  control  him.  For  this  purpose,  he  must  ap- 
ply such  means  and  motives  as  he  is  acquainted  with, 
and  use  them  with  such  skill  as  he  may  happen  to  possess. 


228  THE   WORK   OP  EDUCATION. 

In  regard  to  the  intellect,  the  parent  has  one  general 
notion  that  the  child  has  faculties  by  which  he  can  learn, 
and  he  has  another  general  notion  that  there  are  things 
to  be  learned ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  he  is  utterly  ig- 
norant of  the  distinctive  nature  of  the  intellectual  facul- 
ties ;  of  the  periods  of  their  respective  development ;  of 
the  particular  classes  of  objects  in  the  external  world, 
and  the  particular  subjects  of  philosophical  speculation, 
which  are  related  to  particular  faculties,  and  adapted  to 
arouse  and  strengthen  them ;  and  he  is  also  ignorant  of 
all  the  favoring  circumstances  under  which  the  faculties 
and  their  related  objects  should  be  brought  into  com- 
munion. In  such  a  condition  of  things,  are  not  the 
chances  as  infinity  to  one  against  the  proper  training  of 
the  child  ? 

I  say,  the  parent  who  has  never  read  or  reflected  on 
this  subject,  is  necessarily  ignorant  of  the  favoring  cir- 
cumstances under  which  knowledge  should  be  addressed 
to  a  child's  mind.  What  but  a  profound  and  widely 
prevalent  ignorance  on  this  point,  can  account  for  the 
fact,  that  a  parent  should  send  his  child  of  four  years 
of  age  to  a  dreary  and  repulsive  schoolroom,  and  plant 
him  there  upon  a  seat,  which,  like  the  old  instruments 
of  torture,  seems  to  have  been  contrived  in  the  light  of 
anatomical  knowledge,  and  pre-adapted  to  shoot  aches 
ai^d  cramps  into  every  joint  and  muscle  ?  What  but  ig- 
norance on  this  subject,  could  ever  permit  a  teacher  to 
enforce  stagnation  upon  both  the  body  and  the  mind  of 
a  little  child,  for  at  least  two  hours  and  a  half  of  the 
three  hours  in  each  half  day's  session  of  a  school  ?  In 
our  old  schoolhouses,  and  under  our  old  system,  were 
not  little  children  denied  alike  the  repose  of  sleep  and  the 
excitements  of  being  awake  ?  Were  not  their  heads  often 
surrounded  by  air  as  hot  and  dry  as  that  of  an  African 


THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  229 

desert,  while  Boreas  was  allowed  to  seize  them  by  the 
feet  ?  Were  they  not  condemned  to  read  what  they  did 
not  comprehend,  and  to  commit  to  memory  arbitrary 
rules  in  grammar  and  in  arithmetic,  which  were  not 
explained  ?  Did  the  parent  visit  the  school,  or  manifest 
interest  and  sympathy  in  the  studies  of  the  child  ?  And 
when,  at  last,  alienation  and  disgust  succeeded,  when  the 
school  was  deserted,  the  books  thrown  aside,  and  scenes 
of  rude  and  riotous  pleasure  were  sought  in  their  stead, 
did  not  the  parent  justify  himself,  and  throw  the  blame 
of  his  own  folly  upon  nature,  by  saying,  Alas !  the  child 
never  loved  learning  ?  But  I  ask  whether  such  a  course 
of  proceeding  is  a  fair  trial  of  the  question,  whether  God 
has  created  the  human  intellect  to  hate  knowledge  ?  In 
all  soberness  I  ask,  whether  it  would  not  be  every  whit 
as  fair  an  experiment,  should  an  idiot  seize  a  child  in  one 
hand  and  a  honey-pot  in  the  other,  and  after  besmearing 
the  soles  of  his  feet  and  the  palms  of  his  hands,  and  the 
nape  of  his  neck  with  the  honey,  and  producing  only  resist- 
ance and  disgust,  should  then  deny  that  children  like 
honey  ? 

Still  more  disastrous  are  the  mistakes  of  ignorance, 
in  moral  training.  All  punishment,  for  instance,  holds 
the  most  intimate  relation  to  morals  ;  and  yet,  how  reck- 
less and  absurd  is  its  infliction,  when  administered  by 
ignorant  or  passionate  parents  !  When  a  child  is  made 
to  expiate  a  wrong,  by  committing  to  memory  two  chap- 
ters in  the  Bible,  —  as  many  a  child  has  been  compelled 
to  do,  —  does  it  make  him  love  the  right  or  —  hate  the 
Bible  ?  When  a  rich  father  threatens  to  disinherit  a  way- 
ward son,  does  the  menace  tend  to  make  that  son  obey 
the  fifth  commandment,  or  does  it  only  make  him  hope 
that  his  father  will  die  in  a  fit,  and  too  suddenly  to  make 
a  will  ?  I  once  saw  the  mother  of  a  large  family  of  chil- 


230  THE   WORK   OP   EDUCATION. 

dren,  —  a  woman  who  would  have  been  ashamed  not  to 
be  able  to  discuss  the  merits  of  the  latest  novel,  —  induce 
her  little  son  to  take  a  nauseous  dose  of  medicine,  by  tell- 
ing him  that  if  he  did  not  swallow  it  quickly,  she  would 
call  in  his  little  sister  and  give  it  all  to  her ;  and  so  strong 
had  the  selfish  desire  of  getting  something  from  his  sister 
become,  that  the  little  imp  shut  his  eyes,  scowled  terri- 
bly, and  gulped  down  the  dose  !  When  a  child,  to  whom 
no  glimpse  of  the  necessity  and  beauty  of  truth  has  ever 
been  revealed,  sees  a  terrific  storm  of  vengeance  gathering 
over  him,  and  just  ready  to  burst  upon  his  head,  it  is  not 
depravity,  it  is  only  the  instinct  of  self-preservation,  that 
prompts  him  to  escape,  through  falsehood.  Bodily  fear 
is  one  of  the  lowest  of  all  motives,  whether  we  regard  the 
object  or  the  actor.  As  it  regards  the  object,  it  is  the 
brute,  and  the  brutish  part  of  man  only,  that  are  amena- 
ble to  it.  As  it  regards  the  agent,  no  one  is  so  ignorant 
and  barbarous  as  not  to  know  its  power.  The  Hottentot, 
the  Esquimaux,  the  Fejee-Islander,  —  all  know  that  the 
power  of  inflicting  corporal  pain  produces  subjection  ;  — 
nay,  the  more  ignorant  and  barbarian  any  one  may  be, 
the  more  sure  is  he  to  make  the  power  of  inflicting  pain 
his  only  resource.  I  do  not  mean  to  say,  that,  in  the 
present  state  of  society,  this  motive  can  be  wholly  dis- 
pensed with,  in  the  government  of  children  ;  or,  that  evils 
worse  than  itself  might  not  arise  from  its  universal  pro- 
scription. Still,  its  true  place  is  certainly  at,  or  very  near, 
the  bottom  of  the  scale.  It  may  be  used  to  prevent 
wrong,  by  the  sudden  arrest  of  the  offender  ;  but  it  never 
can  be  used  as  an  incentive  to  good.  Other  low  classes 
of  motives  consist  in  the  gratification  of  appetite,  the 
acquisition  of  wealth,  the  love  of  display,  the  desire  of 
outshining  others,  and  so  forth.  A  character  of  high 
and  enduring  excellence  can  never  be  formed  from  any 


THE   WORK    OF    EDUCATION.  231 

quantity  or  any  combination  of  these  elements.  If  dis- 
tinction is  the  only  thing  for  which  my  heart  pants,  and 
I  happen  to  belong  to  a  community  or  a  party  that  rever- 
ences truth  and  virtue,  then  I  shall  be  led  to  simulate 
such  motives  and  to  perform  such  external  actions  as 
resemble  truth  and  virtue.  Even  then,  however,  the 
semblance,  and  not  the  reality,  will  be  my  aim.  But  if 
I  am  transferred  to  another  community  or  party,  which 
carries  its  measures  by  persecution  and  senseless  clamor, 
or  by  persistence  in  falsehood  and  wrong ;  then,  spurred 
on  by  the  same  love  of  distinction,  I  shall  persecute,  and 
clamor  senselessly,  and  persist  to  the  end  in  falsehood 
and  wrong.  It  is  because  of  a  prevalent  ignorance  how 
to  use  the  motives  of  filial  affection,  of  justice,  of  bene- 
volence, of  duty  to  God,  of  doing  right  for  the  internal 
delight  which  doing  right  bestows  ;  —  it  is  because  of  this 
prevalent  ignorance,  that  bodily  fear,  the  pleasures  of 
appetite,  emulation  and  pride,  constitute  so  large  a  portion 
of  the  motive-forces  that  are  now  employed  in  the  educa- 
tion of  children.  And  parents  are  yet  to  be  made  to 
believe,  with  a  depth  of  conviction  they  have  never  ex- 
perienced ;  they  are  to  be  made  to  feel  as  they  have  never 
yet  felt,  that,  from  the  same  infant  natures  committed  to 
their  care,  they  may  rear  up  children  who  will  be  an  honor 
to  their  old  age,  and  a  staff  for  their  declining  years,  or  those 
who  will  bring  down  their  gray  hairs  with  sorrow  to  the 
grave  ;  —  and  that,  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases,  these 
results  depend,  more  than  upon  all  things  else,  upon  the 
knowledge  or  the  ignorance,  the  wisdom  or  the  folly,  that 
superintends  their  training. 

In  explaining  that  part  of  the  work  of  education  which 
the  Creator  seems  to  have  committed  to  the  hands  of 
men,  I  have  been  led  thus  far  to  speak  of  our  duties  as 
individuals,  rather  than  of  those  social  and  civil  duties 


232  THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION. 

which  devolve  upon  us  as  neighbors,  as  citizens,  and  as 
constituent  parts  of  the  government. 

The  first  glance  at  our  social  position  reveals  one  of 
the  most  striking  and  significant  facts  in  the  arrangements 
of  Providence  ;  and,  as  a  consequence  of  this  fact,  one 
of  the  clearest  of  our  social  duties.  A  parent,  however 
vigilant  and  devoted  he  may  be,  prepares  only  a  part  of 
the  influences  which  go  to  the  education  of  his  child. 
The  community,  and  the  State  where  he  resides,  prepare 
the  rest.  The  united  force  of  all  makes  up  the  positive 
education  which  the  child  receives.  No  person  can  now 
be  situated  as  Adam  and  Eve  were,  when  rearing  the  two 
elder  members  of  their  family.  Without  knowledge, 
and  guided  only  by  chance,  or  by  their  own  uninstructed 
sagacity,  they  reared  first  a  murderer,  and  then  one  who 
feared  God.  The  first  was  what  we  call  a  spoiled  child, 
—  whether  ruined  by  indulgence  or  by  severity,  we  know 
not,  perhaps  by  both  ;  —  the  second  had  the  advantage 
of  a  little  parental  experience.  But  since  their  day,  all 
children  are  subject  to  influences  external  to  the  parental 
household.  No  parent,  now,  can  bring  up  his  child  in 
an  exhausted  receiver.  And  henco  the  necessity  that 
each  parent  should  look,  not  only  to  his  own  conduct, 
but  to  the  conduct  of  the  community  in  which  he  resides. 
That  community  must  be  moral  and  exemplary,  in  order 
that  he  may  be  safe.  Here,  therefore,  even  an  enlight- 
ened selfishness  coincides  with  benevolence.  In  order  to 
our  own  highest  good,  we  are  bound  to  do  good  to  others  ; 
for  we  cannot  be  wholly  safe  while  they  are  wrong.  How 
glorious  the  appointment  of  Providence,  which  thus 
reconciles  self-love  with  the  love  of  the  race;  which,  in- 
deed, makes  the  former  defeat  its  own  ends,  when  it  pur- 
Hues  them  in  contravention  of  the  latter  !  The  love  of 
our  own  children,  then,  when  duly  enlightened,  prompts 
us  to  regard  the  welfare  of  those  of  our  neighbor. 


THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  233 

Emphatically  do  some  of  the  most  important  of  all 
duties  devolve  upon  us,  as  members  of  a  State  which  is 
invested  with  the  authority  to  legislate  for  itself.  If  we 
were  governed  by  others,  on  their  heads  would  be  the 
crime  of  our  misgovernment ;  but  when  we  govern  our- 
selves, and  govern  wrongly,  we  unite,  in  our  own  persons, 
both  the  guilt  and  the  calamities  of  misgovernment.  In 
the  present  state  of  society,  an  education  of  a  high  char- 
acter cannot  be  universally  diffused,  without  a  union  of 
the  forces  of  society,  and  a  concert  in  its  action.  Co-op- 
eration and  unity  of  purpose  will  be  found  to  increase  the 
power  of  citizens  in  peace,  as  much  as  they  do  of  soldiers 
in  war.  And  hence  the  duty  of  combined  action,  on  the 
part  of  the  community,  in  reference  to  this  subject.  But 
combined  action  can  never  be  effected  to  any  useful  pur- 
pose amongst  a  free  people,  without  agreement,  without 
compact,  that  is,  —  where  the  action  of  great  numbers  is 
concerned,  —  without  law.  Upon  the  lawgivers  then,  there 
fastens  an  obligation  of  inexpressible  magnitude  and  sa- 
credness  ;  and  utterly  unworthy  the  honorable  station  of 
a  lawgiver  is  he,  who  would  elude  this  duty,  or  who  un- 
faithfully discharges  it,  or  who  perverts  it  to  any  sinister 
purpose.  And  why  should  the  legislator  forever  debase 
his  character  to  that  of  a  scourger,  a  prison-keeper,  and 
an  executioner?  Why,  wearing  a  gorgon's  head,  and 
carrying  stripes  in  his  hand,  should  he  pass  before  the 
community  as  an  avenger  of  evil  only,  and  not  as  the  pro- 
moter and  rewarder  of  good  ?  If  terror  and  retribution 
are  his  highest  attributes,  then  his  post  is  no  more  honor- 
able than  that  of  the  beadle  who  whips,  or  of  the  heads- 
man who  decapitates.  A  legislator,  worthy  of  the  name, 
should  seek  for  honor  and  veneration,  by  moving  through 
society  as  a  minister  of  beneficence,  rather  than  as  a  spec- 
tre of  fear.  He  should  reflect  that  new  and  better  re- 


234  THE  WOBK   OP  EDUCATION. 

suits  in  the  condition  of  mankind  are  to  be  secured  by 
new  and  wiser  measures.  We  are  not  to  ask  Heaven  for 
the  annihilation  of  the  present  race,  and  the  creation  of 
a  new  one  ;  but  we  are  to  ascertain  and  to  use  those 
means,  for  the  renovation,  the  redemption  of  mankind, 
which  have  been  given,  or  which  the  veracity  of  Heaven 
stands  pledged  to  give,  whenever,  on  our  part,  we  perform 
the  conditions  preliminary  to  receiving  them. 

You  will  recollect,  my  friends,  that  memorable  fire 
which  befell  the  city  of  New  York,  in  the  year  1835.  It 
took  place  in  the  heart  of  that  great  emporium,  —  a  spot 
where  merchants,  whose  wealth  was  like  that  of  princes, 
had  gathered  their  treasures.  In  but  few  places  on  the 
surface  of  the  globe  was  there  accumulated  such  a  mass 
of  riches.  From  each  continent  and  from  all  the  islands 
of  the  sea,  ships  had  brought  thither  their  tributary  offer- 
ings, until  it  seemed  like  a  magazine  of  the  nations,  —  the 
coffer  of  the  world's  wealth.  In  the  midst  of  these 
hoards,  the  fire  broke  out.  It  raged  between  two  and 
three  days.  Above,  the  dome  of  the  sky  was  filled  with 
appalling  blackness;  below,  the  flames  were  of  an  unap- 
proachable intensity  of  light  and  heat ;  and  such  were 
the  inclemency  of  the  season  and  the  raging  of  the 
elements,  that  all  human  power  and  human  art  seemed 
as  vanity  and  nothing.  Yet,  situated  in  the  very  midst 
of  that  conflagration,  there  was  one  building,  upon 
which  the  storm  of  fire  beat  in  vain.  All  around, 
from  elevated  points  in  the  distance,  frOm  steeples  and 
the  roofs  of  houses,  thousands  of  the  trembling  inhab- 
itants gazed  upon  the  awful  scene;  and  thought, —  as 
well  they  might,  —  that  it  was  one  of  universal  and 
undistinguishing  havoc.  But,  as  some  swift  cross-wind 
furrowed  athwart  that  sea  of  flame,  or  a  broad  blast  beat 
down  its  aspiring  crests,  there,  safe  amidst  ruin,  erect 


THE  WORK  OF  EDUCATION.  235 

amongst  the  falling,  was  seen  that  single  edifice.  And 
when,  at  last,  the  ravage  ceased,  and  men  again  walked 
those  streets  in  sorrow,  which  so  lately  they  had  walked 
in  pride,  there  stood  that  solitary  edifice,  unharmed  amid 
surrounding  desolation ;  —  from  the  foundation  to  the 
cope-stone,  unscathed ;  —  and  over  the  treasures  which 
had  been  confided  to  its  keeping,  the  smell  of  fire  had 
not  passed.  There  it  stood,  like  an  honest  man  in  the 
streets  of  Sodom.  Now,  why  was  this  ?  It  was  con- 
structed from  the  same  material,  of  brick  and  mortar,  of 
iron  and  slate,  with  the  thousands  around  it,  whose  sub- 
stance was  now  but  rubbish,  and  their  contents  ashes. 
Now,  why  was  this  ?  It  was  built  by  a  workman.  IT 
WAS  BUILT  BY  A  WORKMAN.  The  man  who  erected  that 
surviving,  victorious  structure,  knew  the  nature  of  the 
materials  he  used ;  he  knew  the  element  of  fire ;  he 
knew  the  power  of  combustion.  Fidelity  seconded  his 
knowledge.  He  did  not  put  in  stucco  for  granite,  nor 
touchwood  for  iron.  He  was  not  satisfied  with  outside 
ornaments,  with  finical  cornices  and  gingerbread  work ; 
but  deep  in  all  its  hidden  foundations,  —  in  the  interior 
of  its  walls  and  in  all  its  secret  joints,  —  where  no  human 
eye  should  ever  see  the  compact  masonry, — he  consoli- 
dated, and  cemented,  and  closed  it  in,  until  it  became 
impregnable  to  fire,  —  insoluble  in  that  volcano.  And 
thus,  my  hearers,  must  parents  become  workmen  in  the 
education  of  their  children.  They  must  know  that,  from 
the  very  nature  and  constitution  of  things,  a  lofty  and 
enduring  character  cannot  be  formed  by  ignorance  and 
chance.  They  must  know  that  no  skill  or  power  of  man 
can  ever  lay  the  imperishable  foundations  of  virtue,  by 
using  the  low  motives  of  fear,  and  the  pride  of  superi- 
ority, and  the  love  of  worldly  applause  or  of  worldly 
wealth,  any  more  than  they  can  rear  a  material  edifice, 


236  THE   WORK   OF   EDUCATION. 

storm-proof    and    fire-proof,    from    bamboo    and    cane- 
brake  ! 

Until,  then,  this  subject  of  education  is  far  more 
studied  and  far  better  understood  than  it  has  ever  yet 
been,  there  can  be  no  security  for  the  formation  of  pure 
and  noble  minds  ;  and  though  the  child  that  is  born  to- 
day may  turn  out  an  Abel,  yet  we  have  no  assurance  that 
he  will  not  be  a  Cain.  Until  parents  will  learn  to 
train  up  children  in  the  way  they  should  go,  —  until 
they  will  learn  what  that  way  is,  —  the  paths  that  lead 
down  to  the  realms  of  destruction  must  continue  to  be 
thronged ;  —  the  doting  father  shall  feel  the  pangs  of  a 
disobedient  and  profligate  son,  and  the  mother  shall  see 
the  beautiful  child  whom  she  folds  to  her  bosom,  turn  to 
a  coiling  serpent  and  sting  the  breast  upon  which  it  was 
cherished.  Until  the  thousandth  and  the  ten  thousandth 
generation  shall  have  passed  away,  the  Deity  may  go  on 
doing  his  part  of  the  work,  but  unless  we  do  our  part 
also,  the  work  will  never  be  done,  —  and  until  it  is  done, 
the  river  of  parental  tears  must  continue  to  flow.  Unlike 
Rachel,  parents  shall  weep  for  their  children  because  they 
are,  and  not  because  they  are  not;  —  nor  shall  they  be 
comforted,  imtil  they  will  learn,  that  God  in  His  infinite 
wisdom  has  pervaded  the  universe  with  immutable  laws, 
—  laws  which  may  be  made  productive  of  the  highest 
forms  of  goodness  and  happiness  ;  —  and,  in  His  infinite 
mercy,  has  provided  the  means  by  which  those  laws  can 
be  discovered  and  obeyed ;  but  that  he  has  left  it  to  us  to 
learn  and  to  apply  them,  or  to  suffer  the  unutterable  con- 
sequences of  ignorance.  But  when  we  shall  learn  and 
shall  obey  those  laws,  —  when  the  immortal  nature  of  the 
child  shall  be  brought  within  the  action  of  those  influ- 
ences, —  each  at  its  appointed  time,  —  which  have  been 
graciously  prepared  for  training  it  up  in  the  way  it  should 


THE    WORK   OF   EDUCATION.  237 

go,  then  may  we  be  sure  that  God  will  clothe  its  spirit  in 
garments  of  amianthus,  that  it  may  not  be  corrupted,  and 
of  asbestos,  that  it  may  not  be  consumed,  and  that  it  will 
be  able  to  walk  through  the  pools  of  earthly  pollution, 
and  through  the  furnace  of  earthly  temptation,  and  come 
forth  white  as  linen  that  has  been  washed  by  the  fuller, 
and  pure  as  the  golden  wedge  of  Ophir  that  has  been 
refined  in  the  refiner's  fire. 


LECTURE   V. 
1840. 


LECTURE    V. 

AN  HISTORICAL  VIEW  OF   EDUCATION;    SHOWING  ITS 
DIGNITY  AND  ITS  DEGRADATION. 

GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  CONVENTION  : 

IN  treating  any  important  and  comprehensive  subject, 
it  will  inevitably  happen  that  some  portions  of  it  will  be 
found  less  interesting  than  others ;  —  inferior  in  beauty, 
dignity,  elevation.  In  every  book  we  read,  some  chapters 
will  be  less  animating  and  instructive  than  the  rest ;  in 
every  landscape  we  survey,  some  features  less  impressive 
and  grand ;  in  every  journey  we  take,  some  stages  more 
dreary  and  laborious.  Yet  we  must  accept  them  to- 
gether, as  a  whole, —  the  poor  with  the  good.  This  is 
my  apology  for  presenting  to  you,  at  the  present  time,  a 
class  of  views,  which,  —  whether  they  excite  more  or  less 
interest,  —  will  derive  none  of  it  from  flattering  our  self- 
complacency. 

In  attempting  a  series  of  lectures  on  the  great  subject 
of  Education,  I  have  arrived  at  a  topic  which  must  be 
discussed,  however  far  it  may  fall  below  the  average  in 
interest  and  attractiveness.  In  previous  lectures,  I  have 
spoken  of  the  general  state  and  condition  of  education 
amongst  us,  and  have  pointed  out  some  of  the  more 
urgent  and  immediate  wants  which  it  enjoins  us  to  sup- 
ply. I  have  endeavored  to  unfold  some  of  the  more  vital 
principles  of  this  great  science ;  I  have  spoken  of  its 
objects ;  of  its  importance  in  all  countries  and  in  all 
times  ;  and,  more  especially,  of  its  absolute  and  uncon- 
ditional necessity  under  social  and  political  institutions 

VOL.  I.  16  241 


242  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OF  EDUCATION. 

like  ours.  Under  this  last  head,  I  have  endeavored  to 
demonstrate  that,  in  a  land  of  liberty,  —  that  is,  in  a  land 
where  the  people,  in  their  collective  capacity,  are  free  to  do 
wrong  as  well  as  free  to  do  right ;  where  there  is  no  san- 
guinary or  surgical  code  of  laws  to  cut  off  the  offending 
members  of  society  ;  no  thousand-eyed  police  to  detect 
transgression  and  crush  it  in  the  germ  ;  —  in  fine,  where 
are  few  external  restraints  which  can  be  brought  to  bear 
upon  the  appetites  and  passions  of  men,  —  that,  in  such 
a  land,  there  must  be  internal  restraints ;  that  reason, 
conscience,  benevolence,  and  a  reverence  for  all  that  is 
sacred,  must  supply  the  place  of  force  and  fear ;  and,  for 
this  purpose,  the  very  instincts  of  self-preservation  ad- 
monish us  to  perfect  our  system  of  education,  and  to 
carry  it  on  far  more  generally  and  more  vigorously  than 
we  have  ever  yet  done.  For  this  purpose  we  must  study 
the  principles  of  education  more  profoundly ;  we  must 
make  ourselves  acquainted  with  the  art,  or  processes,  by 
which  those  principles  can  be  applied  in  practice ;  and, 
by  establishing  proper  agencies  and  institutions,  we  must 
cause  a  knowledge  both  of  the  science  and  the  art  to  be 
diffused  throughout  the  entire  mass  of  the  people. 

In  this  stage  of  the  inquiry,  it  seems  proper  to  consid- 
er in  what  relative  esteem  or  disesteem  the  subject  of  ed- 
ucation has  heretofore  been  held,  and  is  now  held,  in  the 
regards  of  men.  Let  us  seek  an  answer  to  such  ques- 
tions as  these  :  —  Have  men  assigned  to  the  cause  of  ed- 
ucation a  high  or  a  low  position  ?  What  things  have  they 
placed  above  it ;  and  what  things,  (if  any,)  have  they 
placed  below  it  ?  How  have  its  followers  been  honored 
or  rewarded  ?  What  means,  instrumentalities,  accommo- 
dations, have  been  provided  for  carrying  on  the  work  ? 
In  fine,  when  its  interests  have  come  in  competion  with 
other  interests,  which  have  been  made  to  yield  ?  It  is  re- 


ITS    DIGNITY   AND    ITS    DEGRADATION.  243 

lated  of  a  certain  king,  that,  when  embarked  on  a  voyage, 
attended  by  some  of  his  courtiers,  and  carrying  with  him 
some  of  his  treasures,  a  storm  arose^  which  made  it  ne- 
cessary to  lighten  the  ship  ;  — whereupon,  he  commanded 
his  courtiers  to  be  thrown  overboard,  but  saved  his 
money.  How  is  it  with  parents,  who  are  embarked  with 
fortune  and  family  on  this  voyage  of  life  ;  —  when  they 
need  a  better  schoolhouse  to  save  their  children  from  ill 
health,  or  a  better  teacher  to  rescue  them  from  immorality 
and  ignorance ;  or  even  a  slate  or  a  shilling's  worth  of 
paper  to  save  them  from  idleness  ;  —  have  we  any  parents 
amongst  us,  or  have  we  not.  who,  under  such  circum- 
stances, will  fling  the  child  overboard,  and  save  the 
shilling  ? 

A  ten-pound  weight  will  not  more  certainly  weigh 
down  a  five-pound  weight,  than  a  man  will  act  in  obedi- 
ence to  that  which,  on  the  whole,  is  his  strongest  motive. 
When,  therefore,  we  would  ascertain  the  rank  which 
education  actually  holds  in  the  regards  of  any  community, 
we  must  not  merely  listen  to  what  that  community  says  ; 
we  must  see  what  it  does.  This  is  especially  true, 
in  our  country,  where  this  cause  has  so  many  flatterers, 
but  so  few  friends.  Not  by  their  ivords,  but  by  their 
works,  shall  yc  know  them,  is  a  test  of  universal  appli- 
cation. Nor  must  we  stop  with  inspecting  the  form  of 
the  system  which  may  have  been  anywhere  established  : 
we  must  see  whether  it  be  a  live  system,  or  an  autom- 
aton. 

A  practical  unbelief  as  to  the  power  of  education,  — 
the  power  of  physical,  intellectual  and  moral  training,  — 
exists  amongst  us.  As  a  people,  we  do  not  believe  that 
these  fleshly  tabernacles,  —  which  we  call  tabernacles  of 
clay,  —  may,  by  a  proper  course  of  training,  become  as  it 
were  tabernacles  of  iron ;  or,  by  an  improper  course  of 


244  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OP   EDUCATION. 

training,  may  become  tabernacles  of  glass.  We  do  not 
believe,  that  if  we  would  understand  and  obey  the  Phys- 
ical Laws  of  our  nature,  our  bodies  might  be  so  com- 
pacted and  toughened,  that  they  would  outlast  ten  cast- 
iron  bodies ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  that  by  ignorant 
and  vicious  management,  they  may  become  so  sleazy  and 
puny,  that  a  body  of  glass,  made  by  a  glass-blower,  would 
outlast  ten  of  them.  We  have  no  practical  belief  that 
the  human  intellect,  under  a  course  of  judicious  culture, 
can  be  made  to  grow  brighter  and  brighter,  like  the  rising 
sun,  until  it  shall  shed  its  light  over  the  dark  problems 
of  humanity,  and  put  ignorance  and  superstition  to  flight ; 
—  we  do  not  believe  this,  as  we  believe  that  corn  will 
grow,  or  that  a  stone  will  fall ;  and  yet  the  latter  facts 
are  no  more  in  accordance  with  the  benign  laws  of  nature 
than  the  former.  We  manifest  no  living,  impulsive  faith 
in  the  scriptural  declaration,  "  Train  up  a  child  in  tho 
way  he  should  go,  and  when  he  is  old  he  will  not  depart 
from  it."  The  Scripture  does  not  say  that  he  probably 
will  not  depart  from  it ;  or  that  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten 
he  will  not  depart  from  it ;  but  it  asserts,  positively  and 
unconditionally,  that  he  WILL  NOT  depart  from  it ;  —  the 
declaration  being  philosophically  founded  upon  the  fact, 
that  God  has  made  provision  for  the  moral  welfare  of  all 
his  creatures,  and  that,  when  we  do  not  attain  to  it,  the 
failure  is  caused  by  our  own  ignorance  or  neglect.  It  is 
not  more  true  that  a  well-built  ship  will  float  in  sea-water 
instead  of  diving  to  the  bottom,  than  it  is  that  spiritually- 
cultivated  affections  will  buoy  up  their  possessor  above 
the  low  indulgences  of  sensuality,  and  avarice,  and  pro- 
faneness,  and  intemperance,  and  irreverence  towards 
things  sacred. 

But  I  repeat,  that,  as  a  people,  we  have  no  living  faitli 
in  these  sublime  and  indestructible  truths ;  —  no    faith 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND    ITS   DEGRADATION.  245 

that  makes  the  mind  think  and  the  hand  work ;  no  faith 
that  induces  exertions  and  sacrifices,  as  men  exert  them- 
selves to  acquire  fortunes  or  to  obtain  honors.  Did  we 
comprehend,  in  all  their  vastness  and  splendor,  the  re- 
wards of  earthly  honor  and  glory,  and  of  a  blissful  im- 
mortality, which  an  appropriate  training  of  all  parts  of 
their  nature  is  fitted  to  procure  for  our  children,  then  we 
should  hunger  and  thirst  after  the  requisite  knowledge  ; 
we  should  make  all  efforts  and  sacrifices  to  secure  the 
outward  means,  by  which  so  great  a  .prize  could  be  won  ; 
and  we  should  subordinate  all  other  desires  to  this  grand 
desire.  It  would  rise  with  us  in  the  morning,  attend  us 
through  the  day,  retire  with  us  to  the  nightly  couch,  and 
mingle  its  aspirations,  not  only  with  our  prayers  but  with 
our  dreams. 

And,  furthermore,  as  a  people,  we  justify  our  scepti- 
cism in  regard  to  the  power  of  education ;  we  virtually 
charge  it  with  impotency ;  we  say  that,  of  two  children, 
brought  up  in  the  same  family,  in  precisely  the  same  man*- 
ner,  and  under  the  same  influences,  one  shall  be  almost  a 
saint,  and  the  other  quite  a  sinner  ;  when  the  truth  is, 
that  the  natural  temperament  and  dispositions  of  chil- 
dren belonging  to  the  same  family,  are  often  so  different 
from  each  other,  that  their  being  brought  up  in  precisely 
the  same  manner,  under  the  same  influences,  and,  of 
course,  without  any  of  the  necessary  discriminations,  is 
enough  to  account  for  the  result  that,  while  one  of  them 
may  be  almost  a  saint,  the  other  should  be  the  chief  of 
sinners. 

We  also  appeal  to  the  history  of  the  past,  and  aver  that 
among  the  most  enlightened  nations  of  the  earth,  educa- 
tion has  done  little  or  nothing  towards  producing  a  state 
of  individual  and  social  well-being,  at  once  universal  and 
permanent;  —  and  now,  in  this  infancy  of  the  world,  we 


216  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OF   EDUCATION. 

rashly  prescribe  limits  to  what  may  be  done,  from  what 
has  been  done, —  which  is  about  as  wise  as  it  would  be  to 
say  of  an  infant,  that  because  it  never  has  walked  or 
talked,  it  never  will  walk  or  talk. 

My  purpose  and  hope,  on  the  present  occasion,  are,  to 
vindicate  the  cause  of  education  from  this  charge  of  im- 
becility ;  and  to  show  that  it  has  prospered  less  than  other 
causes  have  prospered,  for  the  sole  and  simple,  but  suffi- 
cient reason,  that  it  has  been  cherished  less  than  other 
causes  have  been  cherished,  —  not  only  in  former  times 
and  in  other  countries,  but  in  our  own  time  and  country, 
that  is,  always  and  everywhere. 

I  affirm  generally,  that,  up  to  the  present  age  and  hour, 
the  main  current  of  social  desires  and  energies,  —  the  lit- 
erature, the  laws,  the  wealth,  the  talent,  the  character- 
forming  institutions  of  the  world,  —  have  flowed  in  other 
channels,  and  left  this  one  void  of  fertilizing  power. 
Philosophers,  moralists,  sages,  who  have  illumined  the 
world  with  the  splendor  of  their  genius  on  other  subjects, 
have  rarely  shed  the  feeblest  beam  of  light  upon  this. 
Of  all  the  literature  of  the  ancients  which  has  comedown 
to  us,  only  a  most  meagre  and  inconsiderable  part  has  any 
reference  to  education.  Examine  Homer  and  Virgil, 
among  the  poets  ;  Herodotus,  Josephus  or  Livy,  among 
the  historians  ;  or  Plutarch  among  biographers  ;  and  you 
would  never  infer  that,  according  to  their  philosophy,  the 
common  mass  of  children  did  not  grow  up  noble  or  hate- 
ful by  a  force  of  their  own,  like  a  cedar  of  Lebanon,  or  a 
wild  thorn-tree. 

The  most  important  and  most  general  fact  which  meets 
us,  on  approaching  the  subject,  is,  that,  until  within  less 
than  two  centuries  of  the  present  time,  no  system  of  free 
schools  for  a  whole  people  was  maintained  anywhere 
upon  earth ;  and  then,  only  in  one  of  the  colonies  of  this 


ITS  DIGNITY  AND   ITS  DEGEADATION.  247 

country,  —  that  colony  being  the  feeble  and  inconsiderable 
one  of  Massachusetts,  containing  at  that  time  only  a  few 
thousand  inhabitants. 

Among  several  of  the  most  powerful  nations  of  anti- 
quity, where  laws  on  the  subject  of  education  existed, 
there  were  no  Public  Schools.  Rome,  which  so  long 
swayed  the  destinies  of  the  world,  and  at  last  sunk  to  so 
ignominious  a  close,  had  no  Public  Schools.  Its  schools 
were  what  we  call  Private,  —  undertaken  on  speculation, 
and  by  any  person,  however  unsuitable  or  irresponsible. 

Among  the  Jews,  there  seems  to  be  no  evidence  that 
there  were  schools  even  for  boys.  It  is  supposed  that 
even  arithmetic  was  not  taught  to  them,  and  so  univer- 
sally was  the  education  of  females  neglected,  that  even 
the  daughters  of  the  priests  could  not  read  and  write. 
Girls,  however,  were  instructed  in  music  and  dancing. 

The  part  of  education  most  attended  to  by  all  the  an- 
cient nations,  was  that  which  tended  to  strengthen  and 
harden  the  body.  Even  this,  however,  was  hardly  worthy 
of  being  called  physical  education,  because  it  was  con- 
ducted without  any  competent  notions  of  anatomy  or 
physiology.  As  war  was  the  grand  object  which  nations 
proposed  to  themselves,  the  education  of  male  children 
was  conducted  in  reference  to  their  becoming  soldiers.  In 
modern  times  we  have  gone  to  the  other  extreme,  —  edu- 
cating the  mind,  or  rather  parts  of  the  mind,  to  the 
almost  total  neglect  of  the  body.  A  striking  illustration 
of  these  facts  is,  that  the  places  appropriated  to  bodily 
exercises  among  the  Greeks,  were  called  Gymnasia; 
while  the  Germans,  who  sxcel  in  the  cultivation  of  clas- 
sical literature,  call  those  schools  where  mind  is  culti- 
vated, to  the  almost  entire  neglect  of  the  body,  by  the 
same  name.  There  can  be  no  true  education  without 
the  union  of  both. 


248  HISTORICAL  VIEW   OF   EDUCATION. 

The  subject-matter  of  education,  was,  of  course,  very 
limited  amongst  all  ancient  nations.  Their  encyclopaedia 
of  knowledge  would  have  been  but  a  primer,  in  size,  com- 
pared with  ours.  The  seven  liberal  arts  taught  in  the 
celebrated  schools  of  Alexandria,  in  the  time  of  our 
Saviour,  were  grammar,  rhetoric,  dialectics,  arithmetic, 
geometry,  astronomy,  and  music  ;  and  these  constituted 
the  complete  circle  of  liberal  knowledge.  As  eloquence 
conferred  a  celebrity  inferior  only  to  success  in  arms,  it 
was  more  assiduously  cultivated  than  any  of  the  other 
studies.  But  rhetoric  gives  only  a  power  over  men,  while 
natural  philosophy  gives  a  power  over  nature.  In  no 
one  respect  is  the  contrast  or  disparity  between  ancient 
and  modern  times  more  remarkable  than  in  their  igno- 
rance of,  and  our  acquaintance  with  the  natural  sciences. 

It  would  be  unjust  to  pass  unnoticed  a  few  illustrious 
educators  among  the  ancients,  who  existed,  not  in  accord- 
ance with,  but  in  defiance  of  the  spirit  of  the  age  in 
which  they  lived.  One  of  the  earliest,  and  probably  the 
most  remarkable  of  these,  was  Pythagoras,  a  Greek,  bora 
between  five  and  six  hundred  years  before  Christ.  He 
opened  a  school  in  the  southern  part  of  Italy,  and  proved 
the  power  of  education  by  the  results  of  his  labors.  Un- 
der his  instructions,  his  pupils  became  men  of  the  most 
exemplary  and  noble  character  ;  and  going  out  from  his 
school  into  the  different  cities  of  Magua  Graecia,  they  ef- 
fected the  most  beneficent  revolutions  in  the  social  rela- 
tions of  life,  and  the  public  institutions  of  society.  Music 
with  him  was  a  prominent  means  of  culture.  Each  day 
began  and  ended  with  songs, -accompanied  by  the  lyre  or 
some  other  instrument.  Particular  songs,  with  corre- 
sponding metres  and  tunes,  lively  or  plaintive,  religious  or 
mirthful,  were  prepared,  as  excitants  or  antidotes  for  par- 
ticular passions  or  emotions. 


ITS  DIGNITY   AND    ITS   DEGRADATION.  249 

Following  Pythagoras,  were  Socrates,  Plato  and  Aris- 
totle among  the  Greeks,  and  Quintiliau  among  the  Ro- 
mans,—  great  men,  indeed,  but  with  not  enough  of  great 
men  around  them  to  correct  their  errors  ;  -  and  hence  it 
may  be  questioned  whether  the  authority  of  their  names 
has  not  propagated,  through  succeeding  times,  more  of 
error  than  of  truth.  This  is  doubtless  true  of  Aristotle, 
if  not  of  some  of  the  rest. 

Little  was  done  by  any  of  the  ancient  nations  for  the 
honor  or  emolument  even  of  the  best  of  teachers.  We 
know  that  Socrates  was  put  to  death  for  his  excellences ; 
and,  according  to  some  accounts,  Pythagoras  fell  in  a 
public  commotion  which  had  been  raised  by  a  factious 
hostility  to  his  teachings.  Julius  Caesar  was  the  first  who 
procured  for  Grecian  scholars  an  honorable  reception  at 
Rome,  by  conferring  the  right  of  citizenship  upon  them.* 
Augustus  encouraged  men  of  learning  by  honorable  dis- 
tinctions and  rewards,  and  exempted  teachers  from  hold- 
ing certain  public  offices ;  but,  at  one  time,  a  hundred 
and  seventy  years  before  Christ,  Grecian  philosophers  and 
rhetoricians  were  expelled  from  Rome  by  a  decree  of  the 
censors. 

Quintilian,  one  of  the  most  eminent  and  successful  of 
teachers,  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  first,  and  perhaps 
the  only  one,  among  the  ancients,  who  disused  and  con- 
demned whipping  in  school ;  but  his  power  seems,  for 
many  centuries,  to  have  been  among  the  lost  arts.  He 
taught  in  the  last  half  of  the  first  century  of  the  Christian 
era. 

Scattered  up  and  down, — but  with  vast  intervals, — 
among  Grecian  and  Roman  writings,  we  now  and  then 
catch  a  glimpse  of  this  multiform  subject ;  —  as  when 

*  Perhaps  it  is  not  generally  known  that  Julius  Caesar  wrote  a  Latin 
Grammar. 


250  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OF   EDUCATION. 

Polybius  speaks  of  the  influence  of  music  in  refining  the 
character  of  the  Arcadians ;  or  when  Horace  says  that 
the  cultivation  of  the  Fine  Arts  prevents  men  from 
degenerating- into  brutes; — but  considering  the  vast 
expanse,  —  ages  of  time  and  millions  of  minds,  —  over 
which  these  few  beams  of  light  were  thrown,  what  right 
have  we  to  say,  that  the  power  and  beneficence  of  educa- 
tion had  any  opportunity  to  make  known  their  transform- 
ing and  redeeming  prerogatives,  in  ancient  times  ? 

It  occurs  to  me  here  to  make  a  single  remark  in  refer- 
ence to  the  limited  number  of  those  who  enjoyed  the 
advantages  of  education  among  the  ancients.  I  have 
elsewhere  expounded  that  beautiful  law,  in  the  Divine 
economy,  by  which  the  improvement  of  the  society  around 
us  is  made  indispensable  to  our  own  security,  —  because 
no  man,  living  in  the  midst  of  a  vicious  community,  can 
be  sure  that  all  the  virtuous  influences  which  he  imparts 
to  his  own  children  will  not  be  neutralized  and  lost,  by 
the  counter  influences  exerted  upon  them  by  others. 
The  sons  of  Themistocles,  Aristides,  Pericles.  Thucydides, 
and  even  of  Socrates  himself,  were  contaminated  by  the 
corruptions  of  the  times,  and  thus  defeated  their  paternal 
hopes.  The  parent  who  wishes  to  bring  up  his  own 
children  well,  but  refuses  to  do  all  in  his  power  to  perfect 
the  common,  educational  institutions  around  him,  should 
go  with  his  family  into  voluntary  exile,  —  he  should  fly 
to  some  Juan  Fernandez,  where  no  contagion  of  others' 
vices  can  invade  his  solitude  and  defeat  his  care. 

Shortly  after  the  commencement  of  the  Christian  era, 
all  idea  of  general  popular  education,  and  almost  all 
correct  notions1  concerning  education  itself,  died  out  of 
the  minds  of  men.  A  gloomy  and  terrible  period  suc- 
ceeded, which  lasted  a  thousand  years,  —  a  sixth  part  of 
the  past  duration  of  the  race  of  men  !  Approaching  this 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND    ITS   DEGRADATION.  251 

period  from  the  side  of  antiquity,  or  going  back  to  view 
it  from  our  own  age,  we  come,  as  it  were,  to  the  borders 
of  a  great  Gulf  of  Despair.  Gazing  down  from  the  brink 
of  this  remorseless  abyss,  we  behold  a  spectacle  resem- 
bling rather  the  maddest  orgies  of  demons,  than  any 
deeds  of  men.  Oppression  usurped  the  civil  throne. 
Persecution  seized  upon  the  holy  altar.  Rulers  demand- 
ed the  unconditional  submission  of  body  and  soul,  and 
sent  forth  ministers  of  fire  and  sword  to  destroy  what 
they  could  not  enslave.  Innocence  changed  places  with 
guilt,  and  bore  all  its  penalties.  Even  remorse  seems  to 
have  died  from  out  the  souls  of  men.  As  high  as  the 
halls  of  the  regal  castle  rose  into  the  air,  so  deep  beneath 
were  excavated  the  dungeons  of  the  victim,  into  which 
hope  never  came.  By  the  side  of  the  magnificent  Cathe- 
dral was  built  the  Inquisition ;  and  all  those  who  would 
not  enter  the  former,  and  bow  the  soul  in  homage  to 
men,  were  doomed  by  the  latter  to  have  the  body  broken 
or  burned.  All  that  power,  wealth,  arts,  civilization  had 
conferred  upon  the  old  world,  —  even  new-born,  divine 
Christianity  itself,  —  were  converted  into  instruments  of 
physical  bondage  and  spiritual  degradation.  These  cen- 
turies have  been  falsely  called  the  Dark  Ages  ;  they  were 
not  dark;  they  glare  out  more  conspicuously  than  any 
other  ages  of  the  world ;  but,  alas !  they  glare  with  in-' 
fernal  fires. 

What  could  education  do  in  such  an  age  ?  Nothing ! 
nothing !  Its  voice  was  hushed  ;  its  animation  was  sus- 
pended. It  must  await  the  revival  of  letters,  the  art  of 
printing,  and  other  great  revolutions  in  the  affairs  of  the 
world,  before  it  could  hope  to  obtain  audience  among 
men. 

In  the  Augustan  age  of  English  literature,  —  in  the 
days  of  Johnson,  Goldsmith,  Swift,  Pope,  Addison,  —  in 


252  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OF  EDUCATION. 

all  the  beautiful  writings  of  these  great  men,  almost 
nothing  is  said  on  the  subject  of  education.  Not  any- 
where is  there  a  single  expression  showing  that  they,  or 
either  of  them,  had  any  just  conception  of  its  different 
departments,  and  of  the  various  and  distinct  processes  by 
which  the  work  of  each  is  to  be  carried  on.  Dr.  Johnson 
has  a  few  paragraphs  scattered  up  and  down  over  his 
voluminous  writings  ;  but  by  far  the  most  labored  pas- 
sage he  ever  prepared  on  the  subject  was  a  forensic 
argument  for  Boswell,  defending  the  brutal  infliction  of 
corporal  punishment  so  common  in  those  days.  To  show 
the  opinion  of  this  great  man  respecting  the  propriety  of 
giving  an  education  to  the  laboring  and  poor  classes,  let 
me  quote  a  sentence  or  two  from  his  "  Review  of  Free 
Inquiry." 

"  I  know  not  whether  there  are  not  many  states  of  life, 
in  which  all  knowledge  less  than  the  highest  wisdom  will 
produce'  discontent  and  danger.  I  believe  it  may  be 
sometimes  found  that  a  little  learning'  to  a  poor  man  is  a 
dangerous  thing" 

"  Though  it  should  be  granted  that  those  who  are  born 
to  poverty  and  drudgery  should  not  be  deprived  by  an  im- 
proper education  of  the  opiate  of  ignorance,  yet,"  &c. 

One  of  these  expressions  of  Dr.  Johnson  seems  to  have 
been  caught  from  a  celebrated  couplet  of  Pope  :  — 

"  A  little  learning  is  a  dangerous  thing, 
Drink  deep  or  taste  not  the  Pierian  spring ; 
There,  shallow  draughts  intoxicate  the  hrain, 
But  drinking  deeper  sobers  us  again." 

One  would  like  to  know  what  extent  of  acquired 
knowledge  would  constitute  "  deep  drinking"  in  the 
sense  of  this  authority  ;  or,  in  surveying  the  vastness  of 
the  works  of  God,  whether  all  that  Pope  himself  knew, 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND   ITS   DEGRADATION.  253 

though  it  were  multiplied  a  hundred-fold,  would  not  be 
"  a  dangerous  thing."  The  doctrine  of  this  passage  is 
as  false  in  the  eye  of  reason,  as  the  simile  is  in  the  creed 
of  a  teetotaler  ! 

Pope  has  another  oft-quoted  passage,  in  the  last  line  of 
which,  namely,  — 

"  Just  as  the  twig  is  bent,  the  tree's  inclined,"  — 

he  uses  the  word  "  twig"  in  a  false  sense,  as  it  properly 
means  the  end  of  a  limb,  and  not  the  stem  or  shoot  which 
expands  into  a  tree.  In  this  he  was  probably  misled  by 
the  strength  of  his  associations,  because  the  twigs,  or  ends 
of  limbs,  performed  so  important  a  part  in  the  work  of 
education  in  his  day,  that  they  had  become  to  him  the  type 
and  symbol  of  the  whole  process.  At  the  most,  Pope 
merely  symbolizes  the  general  truth ;  he  nowhere  pro- 
poses to  tell  us  what  modes  or  processes  of  cultivation 
will  stimulate  its  aspiring  tendencies,  or  bow  it  downward 
to  the  earth ;  —  he  never  pretends  to  instruct  us  how  the 
tiny  germs  just  breaking  from  the  shell,  or  the  tender 
shoot  just  peering  from  the  earth,  may  be  reared  into  the 
lofty  tree,  bearing  a  forest-like  crown  of  branches  upon  its 
top,  and  having  limbs  and  trunk  of  such  massiveness  and 
cohesive  strength,  that  they  will  toss  off  the  storm  and 
survive  the  thunderbolt. 

In  one  of  the  numbers  of  the  Spectator,  Addison  com- 
pares the  qualities  of  different  dispositions  to  different 
kinds  of  flowers  in  aigarden  ;  but  the  article  is  short,  and 
was  written  for  humor  rather  than  for  instruction. 

Shakspeare  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  the  repulsive  aspects 
of  educational  means,  in  his  time,  when  he  describes  the 
child  as  "  creeping,  like  snail,  unwillingly  to  school." 

Shenstone  makes  himself  merry  with  the  toils  and  pri- 
vations, and  homely  manners  of  a  school  dame. 


254  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OP   EDUCATION. 

Goldsmith  describes  a  schoolmaster  as  an  arbitrary, 
tyrannical,  storm-faced  brute. 

Cowper,  in  his  earnest  appeals,  preferred  in  behalf  of 
the  private  tutors  of  gentlemen's  sons,  gives  us  the  fol- 
lowing glimpses  of  the  indignities  to  which  they  were  cus- 
tomarily subjected  in  his  day  : 

"  Doom  him  not  then  to  solitary  meals, 
But  recollect  that  he  has  sense  and  feels ;  — 
His  post  not  mean,  his  talent  not  unknown, 
He  deems  it  hard  to  vegetate  alone. 
And  if  admitted  at  thy  board  to  sit, 
Account  him  no  just  mark  for  idle  wit  ; 
Offend  not  him,  whom  modesty  restrains 
From  repartee,  with  jokes  that  he  disdains ; 
Much  less  transfix  his  feelings  with  an  oath, 
«  Nor  frown,  unless  lie  vanish  with  the  cloth." 

Sir  Walter  Scott  gathers  all  ungainliness  of  person, 
and  awkwardness  of  manner,  and  slovenliness  of  dress, 
into  one  person,  makes  him  horrid  with  superstition  and 
pedantry,  and  names  the  pedagogue  Dominie  Sampson. 
Even  in  his  sober  moments,  when  expressing  his  own 
thoughts,  rather  than  bodying  forth  the  common  idea  of 
the  times,  he  says  of  Dr.  Adam,  the  learned  author  of  the 
"Roman  Antiquities,"  that  "He  was  deeply  imbibed 
with  the  fortunate  vanity  which  alone  could  induce  a 
man,  who  has  arms  to  pare  and  burn  a  muir,  to  submit  to 
the  still  more  toilsome  task  of  cultivating-  youth." 

In  some  admirable  essays  lately  written  in  England,  for 
an  educational  prize,  the  condition  of  the  school-teacher 
is  represented  as  being  below  that  of  menial  servants, 
throughout  the  kingdom  of  Great  Britain.* 

*  I  find  the  following  pointed  remark,  in  a  lecture  delivered  before  the 
American  Institute  of  Instruction,  at  Pittsfield,  in  1843,  by  R.  B.  Hubbard, 
Esq.,  the  accomplished  Principal  of  the  High  School  at  Worcester,  Mass.  :  — 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND   ITS   DEGRADATION.  255 

Milton,  it  is  true,  wrote  a  short  tract  on  education, 
beautiful  to  read,  but  wholly  destitute  of  practical  instruc- 
tion ;  and  it  would  be  unpardonable  to  pass  by  that  admi- 
rable treatise,  Locke's  "  Thoughts  on  Education  ;  "  — but 
while  his  system  of  metaphysics,  which  is  the  poorest  of 
all  his  works,  has  been  made  a  text-book  both  in  the  uni- 
versities of  England  and  America,  this  excellent  treatise, 
which  is  by  far  better  than  any  thing  which  had  ever  then 
been  written,  has  been  almost  wholly  neglected  and  for- 
gotten. 

Consider,  too,  my  friends,  another  general  but  decisive 
fact,  showing  in  what  subordinate  estimation  this  para- 
mount subject  has  been  held.  The  human  mind  is  so  coir 
stituted  that  it  cannot  embrace  any  great  idea,  but,  forth- 
with, all  the  faculties  strive  to  aggrandize  and  adorn  and, 
dignify  it.  Let  any  principle  or  sentiment  be  elevated  by 
the  public  voice,  —  whether  rightfully  or  wrongfully, — 
to  a  station  of  pre-eminence  or  grandeur,  in  the  eyes  of 
men,  and  it  is  at  once  personified,  and,  as  it  were,  conse- 
crated. The  arts  go,  as  on  a  pilgrimage,  to  do  it  rever- 
ence. Music  celebrates  it  in  national  songs.  Sculpture 
embodies  it  in  enduring  substance,  and  clothes  it  in  im- 
pressive forms.  Painting  catches  each  flashing  beam  of 
inspiration  from  its  look,  transfers  it  to  her  canvas,  and 
holds  it  fast  for  centuries,  in  her  magic  coloring.  Archi. 
tecture  rears  temples  for  its  residence  and  shrines  for  its 
worship.  Religion  sanctifies  it.  In  fine,  whatever  is  ac- 
counted high  or  holy  in  any  age,  all  the  sentiments  of 
taste,  beauty,  imagination,  reverence, belonging  to  that  age, 

"  The  meed  of  praise  has  been  very  liberally  and  justly  awarded  to  Wash- 
ington Irving  for  his  valuable  contributions  to  our  scanty  stock  of  polite 
literature ;  yet  it  may  well  be  questioned,  whether  the  injury  done  to  the 
cause  of  common  education  in  the  character  of  Ichabod  Crane  has  not  more 
than  cancelled  the  whole  debt." 


256  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OF   EDUCATION. 

ennoble  it  with  a  priesthood,  deify  its  founders  or  law- 
givers while  living,  and  grant  them  apotheosis  and  hom- 
age when  dead.  Such  proofs  of  veneration  and  love  sig- 
nalized the  worship  of  the  true  God  among  the  Jews,  and 
the  worship  of  false  gods  among  pagans.  Such  devotion 
was  paid  to  to  the  sentiment  of  Beauty  among  the  Athe- 
nians ;  to  the  iron-hearted  god  of  War  among  the  Ro- 
mans ;  to  Love  and  knightly  bearing  in  the  age  of  chivalry. 
Without  one  word  from  the  historian,  and  only  by  study- 
ing a  people's  relics,  and  investigating  the  figurative  ex- 
pressions in  their  literature  and  law,  one  might  see  reflect- 
ed, as  from  a  mirror,  the  moral  scale  on  which  they 
arranged  their  idea  of  good  and  great.  Though  history 
should  not  record  a  single  line  in  testimony  of  the  fact, 
yet  who,  a  thousand  years  hence,  could  fail  to  read,  in 
their  symbols,  in  their  forms  of  speech,  and  in  the  tech- 
nical terms  of  their  law,  the  money-getting,  money-wor- 
shipping tendencies  of  all  commercial  nations,  during  the 
last  and  the  present  centuries  ?  The  word  "  sovereign," 
we  know,  means  a  potentate  invested  with  lawful  dignity 
and  authority  ;  and  it  implies  subjects  who  are  bound  to 
honor  and  obey.  Hence,  in  Great  Britain,  a  gold  coin, 
worth  twenty  shillings,  is  called  a  "  sovereign  ;  "  and  hap- 
py is  the  political  sovereign  who  enjoys  such  plenitude  of 
power  and  majesty,  and  has  so  many  loyal  and  devoted 
subjects  as  this  vicegerent  of  royalty.  An  ancient  Eng- 
lish coin  was  called  an  angel.  Its  value  was  only  ten  shil- 
lings, and  yet  it  was  named  after  a  messenger  from  heav- 
en. In  the  Scriptures,  and  in  political  law,  a  crown  is 
the  emblem  and  personification  of  might  and  majesty,  of 
glory  and  blessedness.  The  synonyme  of  all  these  is  a 
piece  of  silver  worth  six  shillings  and  seven  pence.  As 
the  king  has  his  representative  in  a  sovereign,  so  a  duke 
has  his  in  a  ducat,  —  the  inferior  value  of  the  latter  cor- 


ITS   DIGNITY    AND    ITS   DEGRADATION.  257 

responding  with  the  inferior  dignity  of  its  archetype.  As 
Napoleon  was  considered  the  mightiest  ruler  that  France 
ever  knew,  so,  for  many  years,  her  highest  coin  was  called 
a  Napoleon ;  though  now,  in  the  French  mint,  they  strike 
double-Napoleons.  God  grant  that  the  world  may  never 
see  a  double-Napoleon  of  flesh  and  blood  !  Our  fore- 
fathers subjected  themselves  to  every  worldly  privation 
for  the  sake  of  liberty,  —  and  when  they  had  heroically 
endured  toil  and  sacrifice  for  eight  long  years,  —  and  at 
last  achieved  the  blessing  of  independence,  —  they  showed 
their  veneration  for  the  Genius  of  Liberty  by  placing  its 
image  and  superscription  —  upon  a  cent  ! 

So,  too,  in  our  times,  epithets  the  most  distinctively  sa- 
cred are  tainted  with  cupidity.  Mammon  is  not  satisfied 
with  the  heart-worship  of  his  devotees  ;  he  has  stolen  the 
very  language  of  the  Bible  and  the  Liturgy  ;  and  the  car- 
dinal words  of  the  sanctuary  have  become  the  business 
phraseology  of  bankers,  exchange-brokers;  and  lawyers. 
The  word  "  good,"  as  applied  to  character,  originally 
meant  benevolent,  virtuous,  devout,  pious  ; —  now,  in  the 
universal  dialect  of  traffic  and  credit,  a  man  is  techni- 
cally called  good  who  pays  his  notes  at  maturity ;  and 
thus,  this  almost  divine  epithet  is  transferred  from  those 
who  laid  up  their  treasures  in  heaven,  to  such  as  lay  up 
their  treasures  on  earth.  The  three-days'  respite  which 
the  law  allows  for  the  payment  of  a  promissory  note  or 
bill  of  exchange,  after  the  stipulated  period  has  expired, 
is  called  "grace"  in  irreverent  imitation  of  the  sinner's 
chance  for  pardon.  On  the  performance  of  a  broken  cov- 
enant, by  which  a  mortgaged  estate  is  saved  from  forfeit- 
ure, it  is  said,  in  the  technical  language  of  the  law,  to  be 
saved  by  "  redemption"  The  document  by  which  a  de- 
ceased man's  estate  is  bequeathed  to  his  survivors,  is 
called  a  testament ;  and  were  the  glad  tidings  of  the  New 

VOL.   I.  17 


258  HISTORICAL   VIEW    OP   EDUCATION. 

Testament  looked  for  as  anxiously  as  are  the  contents  of 
a  rich  man's  last  will  and  testament,  there  would  be  no 
further  occasion  for  the  Bible  Societies.  Indeed,  on  open- 
ing some  of  our  law-books,  and  casting  the  eye  along  the 
running  titles  at  the  top  of  the  pages,  or  on  the  marginal 
notes,  and  observing  the  frequent  recurrence  of  such 
words  as  "  covenant-broken,"  "  grace,"  "  redemption," 
"  testament,"  and  so  forth,  one  might  very  naturally  fall 
into  the  mistake  of  supposing  the  book  to  be  a  work  on 
theology,  instead  of  the  law  of  real  estate  or  bank  stock. 
I  group  together  a  few  of  these  extraordinary  facts,  my 
friends,  to  illustrate  the  irresistible  tendency  of  the  hu- 
man mind  to  dignify,  honor,  elevate,  aggrandize,  and  even 
sanctify,  whatever  it  truly  respects  and  values.  But  edu- 
cation,—  that  synonyme  of  mortal  misery  and  happiness  ; 
that  abbreviation  for  earth  and  heaven  and  hell,  —  where 
are  the  conscious  or  unconscious  testimonials  to  its  worth  ? 
"What  honorable,  laudatory  epithets,  what  titles  of  enco- 
niuni  or  of  dignity,  have  been  bestowed  upon  its  profes- 
sors ?  What,  save  such  titles  as  pedagogue,  (which, 
among  the  Romans,  from  whom  we  derived  it,  meant  a 
slave,)  and  pedant,  and  knight  of  the  birch  and  ferule  ? 
What  sincere  or  single  offering  has  it  received  from  the 
hand  or  voice  of  genius  ?  Traverse  the  long  galleries  of 
art,  and  you  will  discover  no  tribute  to  its  worth.  Listen 
to  all  the  great  masters  of  music,  and  you  will  hear  no 
swelling  notes  or  chorus  in  its  praise.  Search  all  the  vol- 
umes of  all  the  poets,  and  you  will  rarely  find  a  respect- 
ful mention  of  its  claims,  or  even  a  recognition  of  its  ex- 
istence. In  sacred  and  devotional  poetry,  with  which  all 
its  higher  attributes  so  intimately  blend  and  harmonize, 
it  has  found  no  place.  As  proof  of  this  extraordinary 
fact,  let  me  say  that,  within  the  last  five  years,  I  have 
been  invited  to  lecture  on  the  subject  of  education,  in 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND    ITS   DEGRADATION.  259 

churches  of  all  the  leading  religious  denominations  of  New 
England  ;  and  perhaps  in  the  majority  of  instances  the  lec- 
ture has  been  preceded  or  followed  by  the  devotional 
exercises  of  prayer  and  singing.  On  these  occasions, 
probably  every  church  hymn-book  belonging  to  every  re- 
ligious sect  amongst  us  has  been  searched,  in  order  to 
find  fitting  and  appropriate  words  wherein  to  utter  fitting 
and  appropriate  thoughts  on  this  sacred  theme.  But,  in 
all  cases,  the  search  has  been  made  in  vain.  I  think  I 
hazard  nothing  in  saying  that  there  is  not  a  single  psalm 
or  hymn,  in  any  devotional  book  of  psalms  and  hymns,  to 
be  found  in  our  churches,  which  presents  the  faintest  out- 
line of  this  great  subject,  in  its  social,  moral  and  religious 
departments,  or  in  its  bearing  upon  the  future  happiness 
of  its  objects.  On  these  occasions,  the  officiating  clergy- 
man has  looked  through  book  and  index,  again  and  again, 
to  make  a  suitable  selection  ;  he  has  then  handed  the 
book  to  me,  and  I  have  done  the  same,  —  the  audience  all 
the  while  waiting,  and  wondering  at  the  delay,  —  and  at 
last,  as  our  only  resource,  we  have  been  obliged  to  select 
some  piece  that  had  the  word  "  child "  or  the  word 
"  young  "  in  it,  and  make  it  do. 

In  contrast  with  this  fact,  think  of  the  size  of  a  com- 
plete collection  of  Bacchanal  songs,  or  of  martial  music  ; 
—  these  would  make  libraries ;  but  the  Muse  of  educa- 
tion is  yet  to  be  born. 

In  regard  to  all  other  subjects,  histories  have  been 
written.  The  facts  pertaining  to  their  origin  and  progress 
have  been  collected  ;  their  principles  elucidated ;  their 
modes  and  processes  detailed.  As  early  as  the  time  oi 
Cato,  there  was  the  history  of  agriculture.  In  modern 
times  we  have  the  history  of  the  silk-worm,  the  history  of 
cotton,  the  history  of  rice  and  of  tobacco,  and  the  history 
of  the  mechanic  arts ;  but,  in  the  English  language,  we 


260  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OF   EDUCATION. 

have  no  history  of  education.  Indeed,  even  now,  we  can 
scarcely  be  said  to  have  any  treatise,  showing  at  what  fa- 
voring hours  the  sentiments  of  virtue  should  be  instilled 
into  young  hearts  ;  or  by  what  processes  of  care  and  nur- 
ture, or  by  what  neglect,  the  chrysales  of  human  spirits 
are  evolved  into  angels  or  demons. 

And  while  almost  nothing  has  been  written  or  taught, 
on  this  subject,  by  the  great  guides  and  dictators  of  the 
human  mind  ;  how  has  it  been  with  the  lawgivers  of  the 
race,  and  the  founders  of  its  social  and  political  institu- 
tions ?  Hitherto  there  has  existed  but  very  little  freedom 
of  thought  and  action  among  mankind.  Laws  and  insti- 
tutions have  been  moulds,  wherein  the  minds  of  men 
have  been  cast,  —  almost  with  mechanical  precision. 
The  reciprocal  action  between  the  institutions  of  society, 
on  the  one  side,  and  the  successive  generations  of  men, 
on  the  other,  has  been  this :  The  generations  of  men  have 
been  born  into  institutions  already  prepared  and  consoli- 
dated. During  their  years  of  minority,  the  institutions 
shaped  their  mind ;  and  when  they  arrived  at  majority, 
they  upheld  the  institutions  to  which  they  had  been  con- 
formed, and,  in  their  turn,  bequeathed  them.  Sometimes, 
indeed,  a  mighty  spirit  has  arisen,  too  large  to  be  com- 
pressed within  the  mould  of  existing  institutions,  or  too 
unmalleable  and  infusible  to  be  beaten  or  molten  into 
their  shape.  Then  came  a  death-struggle.  If  the  insti- 
tutions prevailed  over  the  individual,  he  was  crushed,  an- 
nihilated. If  the  individual  triumphed  in  the  unequal 
contest,  he  dashed  the  mould  of  the  institutions  in  pieces, 
prepared  another  in  his  own  likeness,  and  left  it  behind 
him  to  shape  the  minds  of  coming  generations.  Such 
men  were  Aristotle,  in  regard  to  metaphysics ;  Alfred,  in 
regard  to  law  ;  Bacon,  in  regard  to  philosophy  ;  Luther 
and  Calvin,  in  regard  to  religious  faith. 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND   ITS   DEGRADATION.  261 

Both  in  Europe  and  in  this  country,  scientific  institu- 
tions have  been  founded,  and  illustrious  men,  during  suc- 
cessive ages,  have  poured  the  collected  light  of  their  ef- 
fulgent minds  upon  other  departments  of  science  and  of 
art,  —  upon  language,  astronomy,  light,  heat,  electricity, 
tides,  meteors,  and  so  forth,  and  so  forth.  Such  were 
the  Royal  Academy  of  Sciences,  in  Paris,  founded  in 
1660  ;  the  Royal  Society  of  England,  founded  in  1663  ; 
and  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  founded 
in  1780  ;  —  and  what  ponderous  volumes  of  reports,  es- 
says, and  transactions,  they  have  published  !  But  when 
or  where  have  a  nation's  sages  met  in  council  to  inves- 
tigate the  principles  and  to  discuss  the  modes  by  which 
that  most  difficult  and  delicate  work  upon  earth,  —  the 
education  of  a  human  soul,  —  should  be  conducted  ? 
Yet  what  is  there  in  philology,  or  the  principles  of  uni- 
versal grammar ;  what  is  there  in  the  ebb  and  flow  of 
tides,  in  the  shooting  of  meteors,  or  in  the  motions  of  the 
planetary  bodies  ;  —  what  is  there,  in  fine,  in  the  corpo- 
real and  insensate  elements  of  the  earth  beneath,  or  of 
the  firmament  above,  at  all  comparable  in  importance  to 
those  laws  of  growth  and  that  course  of  training,  by 
which  the  destiny  of  mortal  and  immortal  spirits  is  at 
least  foretokened,  if  not  foredoomed  ? 

So,  too,  in  regard  to  those  ancient  and  renowned  literary 
institutions,  which  have  been  established  and  upheld  by 
the  foremost  nations  of  Christendom,  —  the  Sorbonne  in 
France ;  the  universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  and 
Edinburgh,  in  Great  Britain;  and  the  universities  and 
colleges  of  this  country,  —  the  grand  object  of  all  these 
institutions  has  been,  not  to  educate  the  general,  the 
common  mass  of  mind,  but  to  rear  up  men  for  the  three 
learned  professions  (as  they  are  called),  Physic,  Law,  and 
Divinity.  For  this  comparatively  narrow  and  special 


HISTORICAL   VIEW   OF   EDUCATION. 

purpose,  vast  legislative  endowments  and  munificent  pri- 
vate donations  have  been  made,  and  the  highest  talents 
have  been  culled  from  the  community,  for  presidentships 
and  professorships. 

The  three  learned  professions,  it  is  true,  represent  the 
three  great  departments  of  human  interests,  —  the  Medi- 
cal representing  the  body,  or  corporeal  part,  through 
whose  instrumentality  alone  can  the  spirit  make  itself 
manifest ;  the  Legal  profession  being  designed  to  establish 
social  rights,  and  to  redress  social  wrongs,  in  regard  to 
property,  person,  and  character  ;  and  the  Theological  to 
guide  and  counsel  us  in  regard  to  our  moral  and  religious 
concernments  both  for  time  and  for  eternity.  But  all  the 
learning  of  all  the  professions  can  never  be  an  adequate 
substitute  for  common  knowledge,  or  remedy  for  common 
ignorance.  These  professions  are  necessary  for  our  gen- 
eral enlightenment,  for  guidance  in  difficult  cases,  and 
for  counsel  at  all  times ;  but  they  never  should  aim  to 
supersede,  they  never  can  supersede,  our  own  individual 
care,  forethought,  judgment,  responsibility.  Yet  how 
little  is  this  truth  regarded !  How  imperfectly  do  we 
live  up  to  its  requirements  !  In  respect  to  the  medical 
profession,  we  are  this  year,  this  day,  and  every  day, 
sending  young  men  to  college,  and  from  college  to  the 
medical  school,  that  they  may  acquire  some  knowl- 
edge of  human  diseases  and  their  remedies  ;  but,  at  the 
same  time,  we  are  neglecting  to  educate  and  train  our 
children  in  accordance  with  the  few  and  simple  laws  upon 
which  health  depends,  and  which  every  child  mi-ght  be 
easily  led  to  know  and  to  observe  ;  — and  the  consequence 
is,  that  we  are  this  year,  this  day,  and  every  day,  sowing, 
in  the  constitutions  of  our  children,  the  seeds  of  innu- 
merable diseases  ;  so  that  the  diseases  will  be  ready  for 
the  doctors  quite  as  soon  as  the  doctors  are  ready  for  the 


ITS  DIGNITY  AND  ITS  DEGRADATION.  263 

diseases.  Indeed,  before  the  doctor  confronts  the  disease, 
or  while  he  is  pondering  over  it,  how  often  does  death 
step  in  and  snatch  the  victim  away  ! 

At  what  vast  expense,  both  of  time  and  money,  is  the 
legal  profession  trained,  and  the  judicial  tribunals  of 
the  land  supported  !  Two  or  three,  or  half  a  dozen  years, 
spent  in  preparing  for  college,  four  years  at  college,  and 
two  or  three  years  at  a  law  school,  or  elsewhere,  as  a 
qualification  to  practise  in  the  courts  ;  then,  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  courts  themselves  ;  the  salaries  of  judge?, 
and  of  prosecuting  officers  ;  the  expense  of  jurors,  grand- 
jurors,  and  witnesses;  the  amount  of  costs  and  counsel 
fees  ;  the  vast  outlay  for  prisons,  jails,  and  houses  of 
correction  ;  — and  all  this  enormous  expenditure,  in  order 
to  adjust  disputes,  rectify  mistakes,  and  punish  offences, 
nine-tenths  of  which  would  have  been  prevented  by  a  de- 
gree of  common  knowledge  easily  taught,  and  of  common 
honesty,  to  which  all  children,  with  scarcely  an  exception, 
might  be  trained. 

When  the  law  of  hereditary  distempers  shall  be  as 
profoundly  investigated  as  the  law  which  regulates  the 
hereditary  transmission  of  property,  then  may  we  expect 
some  improvement  in  the  health  and  robustness  and 
beauty  of  the  race.  Compare  all  the  books  written  on 
the  transmission  from  parents  to  children  of  physical  or 
moral  qualities  with  the  law-books  and  treatises  on  the 
descent  of  estates.  When  will  the  current  of  public 
opinion,  or  the  stimulus  of  professional  emolument,  create 
a  desire  to  understand  the  irreversible  ordinances  and 
statutes  of  Nature,  on  this  class  of  subjects,  as  strong  as 
that  which  now  carries  a  student  at  law  through  Fearne 
on  Contingent  Remainders  ?  —  a  book  which  requires  the 
same  faculty  for  divining  ideas,  that  Champollion  had  for 
deciphering  Egyptian  Hieroglyphics. 


264  HISTORICAL   VIEW  OF  EDUCATION. 

And  how  is  it  with  the  clerical  profession  ?  They  enter 
upon  the  work  of  reforming  the  human  character,  —  not 
at  the  earlier  stages  of  its  development,  —  but  when  it 
has  arrived  at,  or  is  approaching  to,  its  maturity; — a 
period,  when,  by  universal  consent,  it  has  become  almost 
unchangeable  by  secondary  causes.  They  are  reformers, 
I  admit,  but  in  regard  to  any  thing  that  grows,  one  right 
former  will  accomplish  more  than  a  thousand  re-formers. 
It  is  their  sacred  mission  to  prepare  a  vineyard  for  the 
Lord,  to  dress  it,  and  make  it  fruitful  ;  but  I  think  no 
one  will  say  that  an  army  of  laborers,  sent  into  a  vine- 
yard at  midsummer,  when  brambles  and  thorns  have  al- 
ready choked  the  vines,  and  the  hedges  have  been  broken 
down,  and  the  unclean  beasts  of  the  forest  have  made 
their  lair  therein  ;  —  I  think  no  one  will  say  that  an  army 
of  laborers,  entering  the  vineyard  at  such  a  time,  will  be 
able  to  make  it  yield  so  abundant  a  harvest  as  one 
faithful,  skilful  servant  would  do,  who  should  commence 
his  labors  in  the  spring-time  of  the  year. 

The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  makes  no  pro- 
vision for  the  education  of  the  people  ;  and  in  the  Con- 
vention that  framed  it,  I  believe  the  subject  was  not  even 
mentioned.  A  motion  to  insert  a  clause  providing  for  the 
establishment  of  a  national  university  was  voted  down.  I 
believe  it  is  also  the  fact,  that  the  Constitutions  of  only 
three  of  the  thirteen  original  States  made  the  obligation 
to  maintain  a  system  of  Free  Schools  a  part  of  their  fun- 
damental law. 

On  what  grounds  of  reason  or  of  hope,  it  may  well  be 
asked,  did  the  framers  of  our  National  and  State  Consti- 
tutions expect  that  the  future  citizens  of  this  Republic 
would  be  able  to  sustain  the  institutions,  or  to  enjoy  the 
blessings,  provided  for  them  ?  And  has  not  all  our  sub- 
sequent history  shown  the  calamitous  consequences  of 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND   ITS   DEGRADATION.  265 

their  failing  to  make  provision  for  the  educational  wants 
of  the  nation  ?  Suppose  it  had  been  provided,  that  no 
person  should  be  a  voter  who  could  not  read  and  write, 
and  also  that  no  State  should  be  admitted  into  the  Union 
which  had  not  established  a  system  of  Free  Schools  for  all 
its  people  ;  would  not  our  National  history  and  legisla- 
tion, our  State  administrations  and  policy,  have  felt  the 
change  through  all  their  annals  ?  Great  and  good  men 
though  they  were,  yet  this  truth,  now  so  plain  and 
conspicuous,  eluded  their  sagacity.  They  did  not  reflect 
that,  in  the  common  course  of  nature,  all  the  learned 
and  the  wise  and  the  virtuous  are  swept  from  the  stage 
of  action  almost  as  soon  as  they  become  learned  and 
wise  and  virtuous  ;  and  that  they  are  succeeded  by  a 
generation  who  come  into  the  world  wholly  devoid  of 
learning  and  wisdom  and  virtue.  The  parents  may  have 
sought  out  the  sublimest  truths,  but  these  truths  are 
nothing  to<  the  children,  until  their  minds  also  shall  have 
been  raised  to  the  power  of  grasping  and  of  understand- 
ing them.  The  truths,  indeed,  are  immortal,  but  the  be- 
ings who  may  embrace  them  are  mortal,  and  pass  away, 
to  be  followed  by  new  minds,  ignorant,  weak,  erring, 
tossed  hither  and  thither  on  the  waves  of  passion.  Hence, 
each  new  generation  must  learn  all  truth  anew,  and  for 
itself.  Each  generation  must  be  able  to  comprehend  the 
principles,  and  must  rise  to  the  practice  of  the  virtues, 
requisite  to  sustain  the  position  of  their  ancestors  ;  and 
the  first  generation  which  fails  to  do  this,  loses  all,  and 
comes  to  ruin  not  only  for  itself  but  for  its  successors. 

At  what  time,  then,  by  virtue  of  what  means,  is  the 
new  generation  to  become  competent  to  take  upon  itself 
the  duties  of  the  old  and  retiring  one  ?  At  which  of 
Shakspeare's  "Seven  Ages"  is  the  new  generation  ex- 
pected to  possess  the  ability  to  stand  in  the  places  of  the 


266  HISTORICAL  VIEW   OF  EDUCATION. 

departed  ?  Allow  that  the  vast  concerns  of  our  society 
must  be  submitted  to  a  democracy,  —  still,  shall  they  be 
submitted  to  the  democracy  of  babyhood,  —  to  those 
whose  country,  as  yet,  is  the  cradle,  and  whose  universe 
the  nursery  ?  Can  you  call  in  children  from  trundling 
hoops  and  catching  butterflies,  organize  them  into 
"  Young  Men's  Conventions,"  and  propound  for  their  de- 
cision the  great  questions  of  judicature  and  legislation, 
of  civil,  domestic,  and  foreign  policy  ?  Or  will  you  take 
the  youth  of  the  land,  from  sixteen  to  twenty-one  years 
of  age,  in  the  heyday  of  their  blood,  with  passions  unap- 
peasable in  their  cry  for  indulgence,  and  unquenchable 
by  it ;  without  experience,  without  sobriety  of  judg- 
ment ;  whose  only  notions  of  the  complex  structure  of 
our  government  and  of  its  various  and  delicate  relations 
have  been  derived  from  hearing  a  Fourth-of-July  Oration  ; 
with  no  knowledge  of  this  multiform  world  into  which 
they  have  been  brought,  or  of  their  dangers,  duties  and 
destiny,  as  men,  —  in  one  word,  with  no  education, — 
and  is  it  to  such  as  these  that  the  vast  concernments  of  a 
nation's  well-being  can  be  safely  intrusted  ?  Safer,  far 
safer,  would  it  be  to  decide  the  great  problems  of  legisla- 
tion and  jurisprudence  by  a  throw  of  dice  ;  or,  like  the 
old  Roman  soothsayers,  by  the  flight  of  birds.  And  even 
after  one  has  passed  the  age  of  twenty-one,  how  is  he  any 
better  fitted  than  before  to  perform  the  duties  of  a  citi- 
zen, if  no  addition  has  been  made  to  his  knowledge,  and 
if  his  passions  have  not  been  subjected  to  the  control  of 
reason  and  duty  ? 

I  adduce  these  extraordinary  facts,  in  relation  to  the 
founders  of  our  Republic,  not  in  any  spirit  of  disparage- 
ment or  reprehension,  but  only  as  another  proof  in  the 
chain  of  demonstration,  to  show  in  what  relative  esteem, 
how  low  down  in  the  social  scale,  this  highest  of  all 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND   ITS   DEGRADATION.  267 

earthly  subjects  has  been  held,  —  and  held  in  a  Republic 
too,  where  we  talk  so  much  about  foundations  of  knowl- 
edge and  virtue. 

And  what  was  the  first  school  established  by  Congress, 
after  the  formation  of  the  general  government  ?  It  was 
the  Military  Academy  at  West  Point.  This  school  is  sus- 
tained at  an  annual  expense  of  more  than  a  hundred 
thousand  dollars.  It  is  the  Normal  School  of  war. 
As  the  object  of  the  common  Normal  School  is  to  teach 
teachers  how  to  teach  ;  so  the  object  of  this  Academy  is 
to  teach  killers  how  to  kill.  At  this  school,  those  delight- 
ful sciences  are  pursued  which  direct  at  what  precise 
angle  a  cannon  or  a  mortar  shall  be  elevated,  and  what 
quantity  and  quality  of  gunpowder  shall  be  used,  in 
order  to  throw  red-hot  balls  or  bomb-shells  a  given  dis- 
tance, so  as,  by  the  one,  to  set  a  city  on  fire,  and,  by  the 
other,  to  tear  in  pieces  a  platoon  of  men,  —  husbands, 
brothers,  fathers.  And  while  it  is  thought  of  sufficient 
importance,  to  nominate  the  most  learned  men  in  the 
whole  land,  and  to  assemble  them  from  the  remotest 
quarters  of  the  Union,  to  make  an  annual  visit  to  this 
School  of  War,  and  to  spend  days  and  days  in  the 
minutest,  severest  examination  of  the  pupils,  to  see  if 
they  have  fully  mastered  their  death-dealing  sciencies  ;  it 
is  not  uncommon  to  meet  with  the  opinion  that  our  Com- 
mon Schools  need  no  committees  and  no  examination. 

Great  efforts  have  been  made  in  Congress  to  establish  a 
Naval  School,  having  in  view  the  same  benign  and  phil- 
anthropic purposes,  for  the  ocean,  which  the  Military 
School  has  for  the  land. 

At  Old  Point  Comfort,  in  Virginia,  there  now  is,  and  for 
a  long  time  has  been,  under  the  direction  of  the  general 
government,  what  is  called  a  "  School  for  Practice," 
where  daily  experiments  are  tried  to  test  the  strength  of 


268  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OF  EDUCATION. 

ordnance,  the  explosive  force  of  gunpowder,  and  the  dis- 
tance at  which  a  Christian  may  fire  at  his  brother  Chris- 
tian and  be  sure  to  kill  him,  and  not  waste  his  ammu- 
nition ! 

At  selected  points,  throughout  our  whole  country, 
the  thousand  wheels  of  mechanism  are  now  playing ; 
chemistry  is  at  work  in  all  her  laboratories  ;  the  smelter, 
the  forger,  the  founder  in  brass  and  iron,  the  prover  of 
arms,  —  all  are  plying  their  daily  tasks  to  prepare  im- 
plements for  the  conflagration  of  cities  and  the  destruc- 
tion of  human  life.  Occasionally,  indeed,  a  Peace 
Society  is  organized  ;  a  few  benevolent  men  assemble  to- 
gether to  hear  a  discourse  on  the  universal  brotherhood 
of  the  race,  the  horrors  of  war  and  the  blessings  of 
peace ;  but  their  accents  are  lost  in  an  hour,  amid  the 
never-ceasing  din  and  roar  of  this  martial  enginery. 
And  so  the  order  and  course  of  things  will  persist  to  be,  — 
the  ministers  of  the  Gospel  of  Peace  may  continue  to 
preach  peace  for  eighteen  centuries  more,  and  still  find 
themselves  in  the  midst  of  war,  or  of  all  those  passions 
by  which  war  is  engendered,  unless  the  rising  generation 
shall  be  educated  to  that  strength  and  sobriety  of  intellect 
which  shall  dispel  the  insane  illusions  of  martial  glory  ; 
and  unless  they  shall  be  trained  to  the  habitual  exercise 
of  those  sentiments  of  universal  brotherhood  for  the  race, 
which  shall  change  the  common  heroism  of  battle  into  a 
horror  and  an  abomination. 

A  deputation  of  some  of  the  most  talented  and  learned 
men  in  this  country  has  lately  been  sent  to  Europe,  by 
the  order  and  at  the  expense  of  the  general  government, 
to  visit  and  examine  personally  all  the  founderies,  armo- 
ries and  noted  fortifications,  from  Gibraltar  to  the  Bal- 
tic ;  —  to  collect  all  knowledge  about  the  forging  of  iron 
cannon  and  brass  cannon,  the  tempering  of  swords,  the 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND    ITS    DEGRADATION.  269 

management  of  steam-batteries,  and  so  forth,  and  so  forth, 
—  to  bring  this  knowledge  home,  that  our  government 
maybe  instructed  and  enlightened  in  the  art  —  to  kill. 
I  have  not  heard  that  Congress  proposes  to  establish  any 
Normal  School,  the  immediate  or  the  remote  object 
of  which  shall  be  to  teach  "  peace  on  earth  and 
good  will  to  men."  "  Go  ye  out  into  every  nation 
and  preach  the  gospel  to  every  creature,"  has  hitherto 
been  practically  translated,  "  Go  ye  out  into  every 
nation  and  kill  or  rob  every  creature."  We  are  told  that 
a  celestial  choir  once  winged  its  way  from  heaven  to 
earth  on  an  errand  of  mercy  and  love  ;  but  for  the  com- 
munication of  that  message  which  burned  in  their  hearts 
and  melted  from  their  tongues,  they  sought  out  no 
lengthened  epic  or  long-resounding  psean  ;  —  they  chant- 
ed only  that  brief  and  simple  strain,  "Peace  on  earth 
and  good  will  to  men,"  as  if  to  assure  us  that  these  were 
the  telectest  words  in  the  dialect  of  heaven,  and  the 
choicest  beat  in  all  its  music.  But  long  since  have 
these  notes  died  away.  Oh !  when  shall  that  song  be  re- 
newed, and  every  tongue  and  nation  upon  earth  unite 
their  voices  with  those  of  angels  in  uplifting  the  heavenly 
strain  ? 

Again  I  say,  my  friends,  that  the  arraignment  and  de- 
nunciation of  men  is  no  part  of  my  present  purpose.  I 
advert  to  these  world-known  facts,  for  the  sole  and  simple 
object  of  showing  how  the  subject  of  education  stands, 
and  has  stood,  in  prosaic  and  poetic  literature,  in  the 
refining  arts,  in  history,  and  in  the  laws,  institutions  and 
opinions  of  men.  I  wish  hereby  to  show  its  relative 
degradation,  the  inferiority  of  the  rank  assigned  to  it,  as 
compared  with  all  other  interests,  or  with  any  other 
interest ;  and  thus  to  exhibit  the  true  reasons  why,  as 
vet,  it  has  done  so  little  for  the  renovation  of  the  world. 


270  HISTOKICAL   VIEW   OF   EDUCATION. 

I  have  spoken  only  of  the  general  current  of  events,  of 
opinions  and  of  practices  common  to  mankind.  In  our 
own  times,  in  such  low  estimation  is  this  highest  of  all 
causes  held,  that  in  these  days  of  conventions  for  all 
other  objects  of  public  interest,  —  when  men  go  hundreds 
of  miles  to  attend  railroad  conventions,  and  cotton  con- 
ventions, and  tobacco  conventions ;  and  when  the  delegates 
of  political  conventions*  are  sometimes  counted,  as  Xer- 
xes counted  his  army,  by  acres  and  square  miles,  —  yet 
such  has  often  been  the  dispersive  effect  upon  the  public 
of  announcing  a  Common-school  Convention,  and  a  Lec- 
ture on  Education,  that  I  have  queried  in  my  own  mind 
whether,  in  regard  to  two  or  three  counties,  at  least,  in 
our  own  State,  it  would  not  be  advisable  to  alter  the  law 
for  quelling  riots  and  mobs  ;  and,  instead  of  summoning 
sheriffs  and  armed  magistrates  and  the  posse  comitatm 
for  their  dispersion,  to  put  them  to  flight  by  making 
proclamation  of  a  Discourse  on  Common  Schools. 

When  we  reflect  upon  all  this,  what  surprises  and 
grieves  us  most  is,  that  so  few  men  are  surprised  or 
grieved. 

It  has  been  my  fortune,  within  the  last  few  years,  to 
visit  schools  in  many  of  our  sister  States  ;  and  I  have 
spared  no  efforts  to  make  myself  acquainted  with  the 
general  system,  —  so  far  as  any  system  exists,  — adopted 
in  them  all.  Although  in  one  or  two  States  the  general 
plan  of  Public  Instruction,  owing  to  its  more  recent 
establishment,  may  have  a  few  advantages  over  our  own, 
yet  there  is  not  a  single  State  in  the  Union  whose  whole 
system  is  at  all  comparable  to  that  of  Massachusetts, 
whether  we  consider  its  extent,  its  efficiency,  or  the  gen- 
eral intelligence  with  which  it  is  administered  by  the 

*  It  was  said  that  at  the  Young  Men's  Whig  Convention,  held  at  Balti- 
more, in  May,  1844,  there  were  forty  thousand  delegates  in  attendance. 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND   ITS   DEGRADATION.  271 

local  authorities.*  Disproportionately,  however,  as  we 
value  this  cause,  it  would  be  impossible  to  convict  Mas- 
sachusetts of  such  dereliction  from  duty  as  has  been 
manifested  by  some  of  her  sister  States. 

I  think,  for  instance,  that  it  would  be  impossible  for  our 
people  to  imitate  the  example  of  our  neighbors,  the  inhab- 
itants of  Maine,  —  so  long  and  so  lately  a  part  of  ourselves, 
—  where,  in  the  year  1839,  there  was  a  general  uprising  of 
the  whole  population,  and  an  appropriation,  by  an  almost 
unanimous  vote  of  the  Legislature,  of  the  sum  of  eight 
hundred  thousand  dollars,  for  the  forcible  rescue  of  certain 
outlands,  or  outwastes,  claimed  by  Great  Britain  ;  while, 
for  three  successive  sessions,  some  of  the  wisest  and  best 

*  I  believe  this  statement  to  have  been  strictly  true  at  the  time  when  it 
was  written,  (1841.)  But,  in  some  respects,  it  is  no  longer  so.  As  it  re- 
gards efficiency,  and  the  means  of  rapid  improvement,  to  say  no  more,  the  sys- 
tem of  the  State  of  New  York  now  takes  precedence  of  any  in  the  Union.  In 
addition  to  a  State  Superintendent  of  Common  Schools,  whose  jurisdiction 
extends  over  them  all,  there  are  one  or  more  Deputy  Superintendents  in  eadi 
county,  whose  time  is  devoted  to  a  visitation  of  the  schools,  to  lecturing 
and  diffusing  information  among  the  people,  and  so  forth ;  and  who  make  a 
report,  once  a  year,  or  oftener,  to  the  Stare  Superintendent,  respecting  the 
condition  of  the  schools  within  their  respective  counties.  These  Deputy 
Superintendents,  generally  speaking,  are  men  of  superior  intelligence,  prac- 
tically acquainted  with  the  business  of  school-keeping,  and  enthusiastically 
devoted  to  the  duties  of  their  office.  We  can  imagine  how  efficient  such  a 
system  must  be,  by  supposing  the  existence  of  one  or  more  intelligent 
school  agents  or  officers,  in  each  county  of  the  State  of  Massachusetts, 
whose  whole  time  should  be  devoted  to  visiting  the  schools,  and  to  creating, 
in  the  minds  of  the  people,  a  more  adequate  conception  of  their  value. 

There  is  a  school  library  in  every  school  district  in  the  State  of  New 
York. 

At  the  session  of  the  legislature,  in  1844,  by  a  unanimous  vote  of  both 
branches,  the  sum  of  $10,000  a  year,  for  five  years,  was  appropriated  for 
the  support  of  a  Normal  School.  This  was  the  crowning  work.  The 
school  was  opened  at  Albany,  in  December,  1 844. 

The  State  of  New  York  now  possesses  every  means  and  facility  for  the 
improvement  of  its  Common  Schools,  which  are  possessed  by  any  other 
State  in  the  Union,  and  some  which  no  other  State  enjoys. 


272  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OF   EDUCATION. 

men  iii  that  State  have  been  striving,  in  vain,  to  obtain 
from  that  same  Legislature  the  passage  of  a  law  author- 
izing school  districts  to  purchase  a  school  library,  by 
levying  a  tax  upon  themselves  for  the  purpose.  In  the 
memoirs  of  the  Pickwick  Club,  it  is  related  that  they 
passed  a  unanimous  vote,  that  any  member  of  said  club 
should  be  allowed  to  travel  in  any  part  of  England,  Scot- 
land or  Wales,  and  also  to  send  whatever  packages  he 
might  please,  always  provided  that  said  member  should 
pay  his  own  expenses.  But  the  Legislature  of  Maine 
would  not  allow  their  school  districts  to  buy  libraries, 
even  at  their  own  cost !  What  latent  capacities  for  enjoy- 
ment and  for  usefulness,  which  will  now  lie  dormant  for- 
ever, might  not  that  sum  of  eight  hundred  thousand  dollars 
have  opened  for  the  people  of  that  State,  for  their  chil- 
dren and  their  children's  children,  had  it  been  devoted 
by  enlightened  minds  to  worthy  objects  ! 

So,  too,  to  give  one  more  example,  you  will  all  recollect 
that  outbreak  of  South  Carolina  against  the  general  gov- 
ernment, in  1832,  when  a  few  of  the  demi-gods  of  that 
State  stamped  upon  the  earth,  and  instantly  it  was  cov- 
ered with  armed  men  ;  a  State  convention  was  held,  laws 
were  enacted,  extending  the  jurisdiction  of  the  courts 
and  investing  the  Executive  almost  with  a  Dictator's 
power,  —  all  under  the  pretext  of  defending  State  rights, 
—  while,  for  the  last  thirty  years,  her  whole  appropriation 
for  public  schools  has  been  less  than  forty  thousand  dol- 
lars per  annum;  and  out  of  a  white  population,  of  all 
ages,  of  less  than  270,000,  there  are  more  than  20,000, 
above  the  age  of  twenty  years,  who  cannot  read  and 
write ;  —  as  though  it  could  long  be  possible,  without 
more  efficient  means  for  the  general  diffusion  of  intelli- 
gence and  virtue,  to  have  any  State  rights  worth  defend- 
ing. 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND   ITS   DEGRADATION.  273 

But,  after  a  thorough  and  impartial  inquisition,  what 
verdict  can  we  render,  with  a  clear  conscience,  in  regard 
to  our  own  much-lauded  Commonwealth  ?  The  Fathers 
of  New  England,  it  is  true,  soon  after  the  settlement  of 
the  colony,  established  Common  Schools,  —  for  which  let 
their  names  be  honored  above  the  names  of  all  other  men, 
while  the  world  stands,  —  but  one  of  their  two  avowed 
objects  was,  to  enable  the  people  to  read  the  Scriptures  in 
their  native  tongue.  They  seem  to  have  forgotten  that 
the  extent  of  intelligence,  and  the  teachable  and  consci- 
entious and  reverential  spirit  with  which  one  comes  to 
that  reading,  is  of  paramount  importance.  The  insane 
followers  of  Matthews,  and  of  Joe  Smith,  can  read  the 
Scriptures.  Years,  too,  before  Common  Schools  were  es- 
tablished for  the  many,  a  college  was  endowed  to  give  a 
full  and  elaborate  education  to  the  few,  who,  according 
to  the  prevalent  views  of  those  times,  were  to  be  desig- 
nated and  set  apart,  even  in  youth,  to  fill  the  offices  of 
church  and  state  in  subsequent  life.  This,  however, 
should  be  remembered  in  their  praiso,  that  the  teachers 
selected  for  the  schools,  in  the  early  years  of  the  colony, 
were  uniformly  men  of  age,  experience,  learning  and 
moral  worth  ;  and,  according  to  the  accustomed  rates  of 
compensation  in  those  days,  they  were  fairly  remunerat- 
ed. In  that  age,  no  prudential-committee-man,  or  other 
officer,  —  by  whatever  name  he  might  have  been  called, 
—  was  seen  groping  about  through  all  the  colonies,  after 
bats  and  moles  to  teach  young  eagles  how  to  fly,  because 
they  would  do  it  cheap.  But  is  it  our  general  practice  to 
select,  as  teachers,  only  those  who  have  arrived  at  mature 
age,  who  are  known  and  respected,  far  and  wide,  for  their 
experience,  weight  of  character,  dignity  of  deportment, 
and  extent  of  intelligence  ?  The  rate  of  compensation, 
too,  had  fallen,  before  the  year  1837,  when  the  Board  of 

VOL.  I.  18 


274  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OP   EDUCATION. 

Education  was  established,  far  below  that  of  skilful  arti- 
sans and  mechanics,  or  even  of  the  better  class  of  opera- 
tives in  manufacturing  establishments.  The  common 
laborers  on  our  farms,  the  journeymen  in  our  shops,  and 
the  workpeople  in  our  mills,  —  all  have  some  fixed  resi- 
dence, some  place  enjoying  the  seclusion  and  invested 
with  the  sacred  associations  of  home.  Even  the  old- 
fashioned  cobbler,  who  used  to  travel  from  house  to 
house,  carrying  on  his  back  his  box  of  tools  and  his 
scraps  of  leather,  has  at  last  found  an  abiding-place  ;  — 
nobody  but  the  schoolmaster  is  obliged  to  board  round. 
Nobody  but  the  schoolmaster  is  put  up  at  auction,  and 
knocked  off  to  the  lowest  bidder !  I  think  this  use  of 
the  word  "  lowest "  must  oftentimes  vivify  a  teacher's 
grammatical  notions  of  the  superlative  degree.  Think 
you,  my  friends,  there  would  be  so  many  young  men 
pressing  forward  into  the  profession  of  the  law,  if  lawyers 
were  put  up  at  auction,  and  then  had  to  board  round 
among  their  clients  ? 

Compare  the  salaries  given  to  engineers,  to  superintend- 
ents of  railroads,  to  agents  and  overseers  of  manufacturing 
establishments,  to  cashiers  of  banks,  and  so  forth,  with 
the  customary  rates  of  remuneration  given  to  teachers. 
Yet,  does  it  deserve  a  more  liberal  requital,  does  it  require 
greater  natural  talents,  or  greater  attainments,  to  run 
cotton  or  woollen  machinery,  or  to  keep  a  locomotive 
from  running  off  the  track,  than  it  does  to  preserve  this 
wonderfully-constructed  and  complicated  machine  of  the 
human  body  in  health  and  vigor ;  or  to  prevent  the  spir- 
itual nature,  —  that  vehicle  which  carries  all  our  hopes, 
—  from  whirling  deviously  to  its  ruin,  or  from  dashing 
madly  forward  to  some  fatal  collision  ?  Custom-house 
collectors  and  postmasters  sometimes  realize  four,  five 
or  six  thousand  dollars  a  year  from  their  offices,  while 


ITS    DIGNITY    AND    ITS    DEGRADATION.  275 

as   many   hundreds   are   grudgingly   paid   to   a   school- 
teacher. 

The  compensation  which  we  give  with  the  hand  is  a 
true  representation  of  the  value  which  we  affix  in  the 
mind;  and  how  much  more  liberally  and  cordially  do  we 
requite  those  who  prepare  outward  and  perishable  gar- 
ments for  the  persons  of  our  children,  than  those  whose 
office  it  is  to  endue  their  spirits  with  the  immortal  vest- 
ments of  virtue  ?  Universally,  the  price-current  of  accom- 
plishments ranges  far  above  that  of  solid  and  enduring 
attainments.  Is  not  the  dancing-master,  who  teaches  our 
children  to  take  the  steps,  better  requited  than  he  who 
teaches  their  feet  not  to  go  down  to  the  chambers  of  death  ? 
Were  the  music-master  as  wretchedly  rewarded  and  as 
severely  criticised  as  the  schoolmaster,  would  not  his 
strains  involuntarily  run  into  the  doleful  and  lugubrious  ? 
Strolling  minstrels,  catching  the  eye  with  grotesque 
dresses,  and  chanting  unintelligible  words,  are  feasted,/*?^/ 
and  garlanded ;  and  when  a  European  dancer,  nurtured 
at  the  foul  breast  of  theatrical  corruption,  visits  our  land, 
the  days  of  idolatry  seem  to  have  returned ;  —  wealth 
flows,  the  incense  of  praise  rises,  enthusiasm  rages  like 
the  mad  Bacchantes.  It  is  said  that  Celeste  received 
fifty  thousand  dollars,  in  this  country,  in  one  year,  for  the 
combined  exhibition  of  skill  and  person  ;  and  that  devotee 
to  Venus,  Fanny  Ellsler,  was  paid  the  enormous  sum  of 
sixty  thousand  dollars,  in  three  months,  for  the  same 
meritorious  consideration,  or  value  received.  In  both 
these  cases,  a  fair  proportion  was  contributed  in  the 
metropolis  of  our  own  State.  At  the  rate  of  compensa- 
tion at  which  a  majority  of  the  female  teachers  in  Mas- 
sachusetts have  been  rewarded  for  their  exhausting  toils, 
it  would  require  more  than  twenty  years'  continued  labor 
to  equal  the  receipts  of  Fanny  Ellsler  for  a  single  night ! 


276  HISTORICAL    VIEW   OF   EDUCATION. 

Thus,  in  our  most  populous  places,  and  amongst  people 
who  profess  to  lead  society,  stands  the  relative  supremacy 
of  sense  and  soul,  of  heels  and  head.  And  I  blush  while 
I  reflect,  that  amongst  all  the  daughters  of  New  England 
who  witnessed  the  unreserved  displays  of  these  Cyprian 
women,  there  was  not  one  to  be  found,  in  whose  veins 
flowed  the  chaste  blood  of  the  Puritan  mothers,  prompt- 
ing her  to  approach  these  female  sans  culottes,  backwards, 
and  perform  for  them  the  same  friendly  service,  which, 
on  a  like  necessity,  the  sons  of  Noah  performed  for  him. 
And  although  I  would  not  silence  one  note  in  the  burst 
of  admiration  with  which  our  young  men,  who  assume  to 
be  the  leaders  of  fashion,  respond  to  the  charms  of  female 
beauty,  agility,  or  grace  ;  yet  I  do  desire, that,  in  paying 
their  homage,  they  should  distinguish  between  the  Venus 
Celestial  and  the  Venus  Infernal !  * 

*  In  discussing  the  propriety  or  impropriety  of  exhibiting  live  specimens 
of  female  nudity,  before  mixed  assemblies  of  ladies  and  gentlemen, — es- 
pecially when  the  spectacles  are  of  the  ad  libitum  sort,  and  where  the  actress 
is  expected  to  acknowledge  every  round  of  applause  by  enlarging  the  field  of 
vision,  — I  have  sometimes  been  answered  in  the  language  of  King  Edward's 
celebrated  saying,  " Honi  soit  qui  mal y pense,"  "Evil  to  him  who  thinks 
eril."  One  thing  has  tended  to  disgust  me  with  this  retort.  I  have  never 
known  it  used,  for  this  purpose,  except  by  persons  more  or  less  deeply  taint- 
ed with  libertinism  during  some  part  of  their  lives.  I  never  knew  it 
given  by  a  man  wholly  free  from  reproach,  in  conduct  and  reputation,  on  the 
score  of  licentiousness. 

One  of  the  most  striking  things  in  the  "  Letters  from  Abroad,"  by  Miss 
C.  M.  Scdgwick,  is  the  uniform  and  energetic  condemnation  which  that 
irue  American  lady  bestows  upon  opera-dancers,  and  the  whole  corps  dc 
htllet.,  for  the  public  and  shameless  exhibition  of  their  persons  upon  the 
stage.  Have  the  young  ladies  of  our  cities  a  nicer  sense  of  propriety,  of 
modesty,  and  of  all  tbe  elements  of  female  loveliness,  than  this  excellent 
author,  who  has  written  so  much  for  their  improvement,  and  who  is  herself 
so  admirable  an  example  of  all  feminine  purity  and  delicacy?  And  have 
the  young  men  of  America  a  higher  ideal  of  what  belongs  to  a  true  gentle- 
man, —  to  a  man  of  lofty  and  noble  nature,  than  a  writer,  who  is  so  justly 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND   ITS   DEGRADATION.  277 

As  I  have  before  intimated,  the  relics,  the  symbols,  the 
monuments,  of  whatever  kind  they  may  be,  which  a 
people  has  prepared  to  sustain  or  enshrine  the  objects  of 
its  interest  or  affections,  furnish  undesigned,  and  there- 
fore demonstrative  evidence  of  the  relative  estimation  in 
which  these  objects  were  held.  The  dull  and  heavy 
Egyptians  have  left  us  the  visible  impress  and  emblem 
of  their  minds,  in  their  indistinct  hieroglyphics,  their 
ponderous  architecture,  and  in  their  pyramids,  which  ex- 
hibit magnificence  without  taste,  costliness  without  ele- 
gance, and  power  without  genius.  But  the  splendid 
temples,  statues  and  arches  of  the  Greeks,  the  massive 
aqueducts  and  horizon-seeking  roads  of  the  Romans,  were 
only  the  outward  and  visible  representations  of  their 
conceptions  of  ideal  beauty,  of  grandeur  and  power. 
Amongst  a  people  strongly  drawn  towards  commerce,  as 
the  source  of  their  supremacy  and  opulence,  like  the 
ancient  Phoenicians,  or  like  the  people  of  Great  Britain 
or  of  the  United  States  at  the  present  day,  the  art  of 
ship-building  is  sure  to  be  cultivated,  and  the  finest 
specimens  of  naval  architecture  to  be  produced.  So,  if 
great  reliance  is  placed  upon  an  extensive  inland  traffic, 
then  innavigable  rivers  will  be  made  navigable,  mountains 
of  solid  rock  will  be  channelled,  valleys  filled,  and  what 
we  have  before  called  the  everlasting  hills  will  be  removed 

celebrated,  in  both  hemispheres,  for  her  pure  and  elevated  conceptions  of 
human  character? 

It  is  not  with  any  harshness  of  feeling  that  I  make  another  remark,  but 
only  in  view  of  the  natural  consequences  or  tendencies  of  conduct ;  but  it 
seems  to  me  that,  for  a  husband  to  accompany  his  wife,  or  a  father  his 
daughter,  to  such  an  exhibition,  ought  to  be  held  a  good  plea  in  bur  in 
all  our  courts  of  law,  should  the  same  husband  or  father  afterwards  appear 
as  a  prosecutor  claiming  damages,  as  the  legal  phraseology  runs,  "for  loss 
of  service  and  pain  of  mind,"  on  account  of  the  wife  or  daughter  whom  he 
had  accompanied  to  such  an  exhibition. 


278  HISTORICAL   YIEW   OF   EDUCATION. 

to  create  facilities  for  internal  transportation.  In  fine, 
our  works  are  the  visible  embodiment  and  representation 
of  our  feelings.  Thus,  the  Psalmist,  referring  to  the 
unspeakably  .magnificent  heavens,  says:  —  they  "declare 
the  glory  of  God,  and  the  firmament  showeth  his  handi- 
work." 

Tried  by  this  unerring  standard  in  human  nature,  our 
Schoolhouses  are  a  fair  index  or  exponent  of  our  interest 
in  Public  Education.  Suppose,  at  this  moment,  some  po- 
tent enchanter,  by  the  waving  of  his  magic  wand,  should 
take  up  all  the  twenty-eight  hundred  schoolhouses  of 
Massachusetts,  with  all  the  little  triangular  and  nonde- 
script spots  of  earth  whereon  and  wherein  they  have  been 
squeezed,  —  whether  sand-bank,  morass,  bleak  knoll,  or 
torrid  plain,  —  and,  whirling  them  through  the  affrighted 
air,  should  set  them  all  down,  visibly,  round  about  us,  in 
this  place  ;  and  then  should  take  us  up  into  some  watch- 
tower  or  observatory,  where,  at  one  view,  we  could  behold 
the  whole  as  they  were  encamped  round  about, — ea,ch  one 
true  to  the  point  of  compass  which  marked  its  nativity, 
each  one  retaining  its  own  color  or  no-color,  each  one 
standing  on  its  own  heath,  hillock,  or  fen  ;  —  I  ask,  my 
friends,  if,  in  this  new  spectacle  under  the  sun,  with  its 
motley  hues  of  red,  gray,  and  doubtful,  with  its  windows 
sprinkled  with  patterns  taken  from  Joseph's  many-colored 
coat,  with  its  broken  chimneys,  with  its  shingles  and  clap- 
boards flapping  and  clattering  in  the  wind,  as  if  giving 
public  notice  that  they  were  about  to  depart,  —  I  ask,  if, 
in  this  indescribable  and  unnamable  group  of  architec- 
ture, we  should  not  see  the  true  image,  reflection  and 
embodiment  of  our  own  love,  attachment,  and  regard  for 
Public  Schools  and  Public  Education,  as,  in  a  mirror,  face 
answereth  to  face  ?  But,  however  neglected,  forgotten, 
forlorn,  these  edifices  may  be,  yet  within  their  walls  is  con- 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND   ITS   DEGRADATION.  279 

tained  the  young  and  blooming  creation  of  God.  In  them 
are  our  hope,  the  hopes  of  the  earth.  There  are  gathered 
together  what  posterity  shall  look  back  upon,  as  we  now 
look  back  upon  heroes  and  sages  and  martyrs  and  apos- 
tles ;  or  as  we  look  back  upon  bandits  and  inquisitors  and 
sybarites.  Our  dearest  treasures  do  not  consist  in  lands 
and  tenements,  in  railroads  and  banks,  in  warehouses  or 
in  ships  upon  every  sea ;  they  are  within  those  doors,  be- 
neath those  humble  roofs ;  and  is  it  not  our  solemn  duty 
to  hold  every  other  earthly  interest  subordinate  to  their 
welfare  ? 

My  friends,  these  points  of  contrast  between  our  devo- 
tion to  objects  of  inferior  interest,  and  our  comparative 
neglect  of  this  transcendent  cause,  are  as  painful  to  me 
as  they  can  be  to  any  one.  Among  all  that  remain,  I 
will  mention  but  one  class  more.  I  ask  you  to  look  at 
'the  pecuniary  appropriations,  which,  within  a  few  years 
past,  the  State  has  made  for  the  encouragement  of  out- 
ward and  material  interests,  compared  with  what  it  has 
done,  or  rather  refused  to  do,  for  the  enlightenment  and 
moral  renovation  of  society,  through  a  universal  education 
of  the  people.  Within  the  last  three  years,  the  treasury 
of  the  Commonwealth  has  dispensed  a  bounty  of  about 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars  to  encourage  the  growth  of 
wheat,  —  and  within  the  last  two  years,  of  about  five 
thousand  dollars  for  the  culture  of  silk,  —  for  those  goods 
which  perish  with  the  using  ;  while  it  has  not  contributed 
one  cent  towards  satisfying  the  pressing  demand  for  ap- 
paratus and  libraries  for  our  schools,  by  which  the  im- 
perishable treasures  of  knowledge  and  virtue  would  be 
increased  a  hundred-fold.  The  State  has  provided  for 
the  gratuitous  distribution  of  a  manual,  descriptive  of 
the  art  and  processes  of  silk-culture,  but  made  no  pro- 
vision for  the  distribution  of  any  manual  on  that  most 


280  HISTORICAL    VIEW   OP  EDUCATION. 

difficult  of  all  arts, —  the  art  of  Education,  —  as  though 
silk-culture  were  more  important  and  more  difficult  than 
soul-culture. 

During  the  very  last  year,  the  State  paid  a  Militia 
Bounty  of  thirty  thousand  dollars,  to  soldiers,  for  three  or 
four  trainings.  Where  are  those  trainings  now  ?  Where 
now  the  net  proceeds,  the  value  received,  the  available, 
visible  result,  as  exhibited  in  the  advancement  of  society, 
or  the  promotion  of  human  welfare  ?  Could  thirty  thou- 
sand dollars  have  been  distributed  to  sustain  the  sinking 
hearts  of  those  females  who  keep  school  for  a  dollar  a 
week,  or  for  ninepence  a  day,  should  we  not  now  be  able 
to  show  some  of  its  tangible  fruits,  and  would  not  a  trans- 
fer of  the  fund  to  such  an  object  have  illustrated  quite  as 
well  the  gallantry  of  the  'citizen  soldier  ? 

To  the  American  Institute  of  Instruction,  whose  noble 
object  it  is  to  improve  the  race  of  children,  the  State, 
after  much  importunity,  has  given  the  sum  of  three 
hundred  dollars  a  year  for  five  years,  (fifteen  hundred 
dollars,)  while  to  Agricultural  Societies,  formed  for  the 
purpose  of  improving  the  breed  of  cattle  and  a  few  other 
kindred  objects,  it  has  given  from  four  thousand  dollars 
to  six  thousand  dollars  a  year,  for  about  twenty  years  ! 

In  the  year  1834,  the  Legislature  made  provision  for 
the  prospective  creation  of  a  School  Fund,  to  be  formed 
from  half  the  proceeds  of  wild  lands  in  the  State  of 
Maine,  and  from  the  Massachusetts  claim  on  the  general 
government  for  militia  services  rendered  during  the  last 
war.  Through  unexpected  good  fortune,  about  four 
hundred  thousand  dollars  have  been  realized  from  these 
sources.  Compare  this  bestowment,  however,  of  a  con- 
tingent sum,  —  a  part  of  which  was  not  regarded,  at  the 
time,  as  much  better  than  a  gift  of  half  the  proceeds  of  a 
lottery  ticket,  provided  it  should  draw  a  prize,  —  with  its 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND    ITS   DEGRADATION.  281 

prompt  and  magnificent  encouragement  of  railroads. 
No  sooner  were  the  eyes  of  the  State  opened  to  the  com- 
mercial importance  of  an  internal  communication  with 
the  West,  than  it  forthwith  bound  itself  to  the  amount 
of  five  millions  of  dollars  in  aid  of  this  merely  corporeal 
and  worldly  enterprise. 

One  word  more,  and  I  will  forbear  any  further  to  de- 
pict these  painful  contrasts; — I  will  forbear,  not  from 
lack  of  materials,  but  from  faintnoss  of  spirit.  Almost 
from  year  to  year,  through  the  whole  period  of  our  his- 
tory, wealthy  and  benevolent  individuals  have  risen  up 
amongst  us,  who  have  made  noble  gifts  for  literary,  chari- 
table and  religious  purposes,  —  for  public  libraries,  for 
founding  professorships  in  colleges,  for  establishing  scien- 
tific and  theological  institutions,  for  sending  abroad  mis- 
sionaries to  convert  the  heathen,  —  some  to  one  form  of 
faith,  some  to  another.  For  most  of  these  objects,  the 
State  has  co-operated  with  individuals ;  often,  it  has  given 
on  its  own  account.  It  has  bestowed  immense  sums  upon 
the  University  at  Cambridge,  and  Williams  College,  es- 
pecially the  former.  It  gave  thirty  thousand  dollars  to 
the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital.  It  put  ten  thousand 
dollars  into  the  Bunker-hill  Monument,  there  to  stand 
forever  in  mindless,  insentient,  inanimate  granite.  But 
while,  with  such  a  bounteous  heart  and  open  hand,  the 
State  had  bestowed  its  treasures  for  special,  or  local  ob- 
jects,—  for  objects  circumscribed  to  a  party  or  a  class, — 
it  had  not,  for  two  hundred  years,  in  its  parental  and 
sovereign  capacity,  given  any  thing  for  universal  educa- 
tion ;  —  it  had  given  nothing,  as  God  gives  the  rain  aud 
the  sunshine,  to  all  who  enter  upon  the  great  theatre  of 
life. 

It  was  under  these  circumstances,  that  a  private  gentle- 
;  man,  to  his  enduring  honor,  offered  the  sum  of  ten  thou- 


282  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OP   EDUCATION. 

sand  dollars,  on  condition  that  the  State  would  add  an 
equal  amount,  to  aid  Teachers  of  our  Common  Schools 
in  obtaining  those  qualifications  which  would  enable  them 
the  more  successfully  to  cultivate  the  divinely  wrought^ 
and  infinitely  valuable  capacities  of  the  human  soul.  The 
hope  and  expectation  were,  that  these  teachers  would  go 
abroad  over  the  State,  and,  by  the  improved  modes  and 
motives  which  they  would  introduce  into  the  schools, 
would  be  the  means  of  conferring  new,  manifold  and  un- 
speakable blessings  upon  the  rising  generation,  without 
any  distinction  of  party  or  of  denomination,  of  mental, 
or  of  physical  complexion.  This  hope  and  expectation 
were  founded  upon  the  reasonableness  of  the  thing,  upon 
the  universal  experience  of  mankind  in  regard  to  all 
other  subjects,  and  upon  the  well-attested  experience  of 
several  nations  in  regard  to  this  particular  measure.  The 
proposition  was  acceded  to.  This  sum  of  twenty  thou- 
sand dollars  was  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  Board 
of  Education,  to  carry  the  purposes  of  the  donor  and  of 
the  Legislature  into  effect.  Institutions  called  Normal 
Schools  were  established.  That  their  influence  might  be 
wholly  concentrated  upon  the  preparation  of  teachers  for 
our  Common  Schools,  the  almost  doubtful  provision,  that 
the  learned  languages  should  not  be  included  in  the  list 
of  studies  taught  therein,  was  inserted  in  the  regulations 
for  their  government ;  —  not  because  there  was  any  hos- 
tility or  indifference  towards  those  languages,  but  because 
it  was  desirable  to  prepare  teachers  for  our  Common 
Schools,  rather  than  to  furnish  facilities  for  those  who  are 
striving  to  become  teachers  of  Select  Schools,  High 
Schools,  and  Academies. 

The  call  was  responded  to  by  the  very  class  of  persons 
to  whom  it  was  addressed.  Not  the  children  of  the  rich, 
not  the  idle  and  luxurious,  not  those  in  pursuit  of  gaudy 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND   ITS   DEGRADATION.  283 

accomplishments,  came  ;  but  the  children  of  the  poor,  — 
the  daughter  of  the  lone  widow  whose  straitened  circum- 
stances forbade  her  to  send  to  costly  and  renowned  sem- 
inaries, —  the  young  man  came  from  his  obscure  cottage- 
home,  where  for  years  his  soul  had  been  on  fire  with  the 
love  -of  knowledge  and  the  suppressed  hope  of  usefulness  ; 
—  some  accounted  the  common  necessaries  of  life  as 
superfluities,  and  sold  them,  that  they  might  participate 
in  these  means  of  instruction  ;  —  some  borrowed  money 
and  subsidized  futurity  for  the  same  purpose,  while 
others  submitted  to  the  lot,  still  harder  to  a  noble  soul, 
of  accepting  charity  from  a  stranger's  hand.  They  came, 
they  entered  upon  their  work  with  fervid  zeal,  with  glow- 
ing delight,  with  that  buoyancy  and  inspiration  of  hope 
which  none  but  the  young  and  the  poor  can  ever  feel. 

But  alas !  while  this  noble  enterprise  was  still  in  its 
bud  and  blossom,  and  before  it  was  possible  that  any 
fruits  should  be  matured  from  it,  it  was  assailed.  In  the 
Legislature  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts,  an 
attempt  was  made  to  abolish  the  Normal  Schools,  to  dis- 
perse the  young  aspirants  who  had  resorted  to  them  for 
instruction,  and  crush  their  hopes ;  and  to  throw  back 
into  the  hands  of  the  donor  the  money  which  he  had 
given,  and  which  the  State  had  pledged  its  faith  to  appro- 
priate,—  the  first  and  only  gift  which  had  ever  been 
made  for  elevating  and  extending  the  education  of  all  the 
children  in  the  Commonwealth. 

In  the  document  which  purports  to  set  forth  the  reasons 
for  this  measure,  the  doctrine,  that  "  the  art  of  teaching- 
is  a  peculiar  art,"  is  gainsaid.  It  is  boldly  maintained 
"  that  every  person  who  has  himself  undergone  a  process 
of  instruction,  must  acquire  by  that  very  process  the  art 
of  instructing  others."  And  in  this  country,  where, 
without  a  higher  standard  of  qualification  for  teachers. 


HISTORICAL   VIEW   OF   EDUCATION. 

without  more  universal  and  more  efficient  means  of  edu- 
cation than  have  ever  elsewhere  existed,  all  our  laws  and 
constitutions  are  weaker  barriers  against  the  assaults  of 
human  passion  than  is  a  bulrush  against  the  ocean's  tide  ; 

—  in  this  country,  that  document  affirmed  that  "  perhaps 
it  is  not  desirable  that  the  business   of  keeping  these 
schools,  [the  Common  Schools,]  should  become  a  distinct 
and  separate  profession." 

Conceding  to  the  originators  and  advocates  of  this 
scheme  for  abolishing  the  Normal  Schools,  that  they  were 
sincerely  friendly  to  the  cause  of  Common  Schools,  how 
strikingly  does  it  exhibit  the  low  state  of  public  senti- 
ment in  regard  to  these  schools !  Those  claiming  to  be 
their  friends,  —  men,  too,  who  had  been  honored  by  their 
fellow-citizens  with  a  seat  in  the  Legislature,  —  thought 
it  unnecessary,  even  in  this  country,  to  elevate  the  teach- 
er's office  into  a  profession  ! 

I  will  never  cease  to  protest  that  I  ana  not  bringing  for- 
ward these  facts  for  the  purpose  of  criminating  the 
motives,  or  of  invoking  retribution  upon  the  conduct  of 
any  one.  My  sole  and  exclusive  object  is  to  show  to  what 
menial  rank  the  majesty  of  this  cause  has  been  degraded ; 

—  to  show  that  the  affections  of  this  community  are  not 
clustered  around  it ;  that  it  is  not  the  treasure  which 
their  hearts  love  and  their  hands  guard  ;  —  in  fine,  that 
the  sublime  idea  of  a  generous  and  universal  education, 
as  the  appointed  means,  in  the  hands  of  Providence,  for 
restoring  mankind  to  a  greater  similitude  to  their  Divine 
Original,  is  but  just  dawning  upon  the  public  mind. 

But  I  have  done.  Let  this  rapid  survey  of  our  con- 
dition, by  showing  us  how  little  has  been  done,  convince 
us  how  much  remains  to  be  accomplished.  Instead  of 
repining  at  the  inadequate  conceptions  of  our  prede- 
cessors, let  us  rejoice  and  shout  aloud  for  joy,  that  we 


ITS  DIGNITY   AND   ITS   DEGRADATION.  285 

have  been  brought  to  a  point,  where  the  vista  of  a  more 
glorious  future  opens  upon  our  view.  Let  us  dilate  our 
spirits  to  a  capacity  for  embracing  the  magnitude  and 
grandeur  of  the  work  we  have  undertaken.  Let  us 
strengthen  our  resolutions,  till  difficulty  and  obstruction 
shall  be  annihilated  before  them.  If  the  ascent  before  us 
is  high,  all  the  more  glorious  will  be  the  prospect  from 
the  summit ;  if  it  is  toilsome,  our  sinews  shall  grow 
mightier  by  every  struggle  to  overcome  it.  If  it  is  grate- 
ful to  recognize  blessings  which  have  been  won  for  us  by 
our  ancestors,  it  is  more  noble  in  us  to  win  blessings  for 
posterity,  —  for  God  has  so  constituted  the  soul,  that  the 
generous  feelings  of  self-sacrifice  are  infinitely  sweeter 
and  more  enduring  than  the  selfish  pleasures  of  indul- 
gence. Although,  as  friends  of  this  cause,  we  are  few 
and  scattered,  and  surrounded  by  an  unsympathizing 
world,  yet  let  us  toil  on,  each  in  his  own  sphere,  what- 
ever that  sphere  may  be,  nor  "  bate  one  jot  of  heart  or 
hope."  Although  we  now  labor,  like  the  coral  insects  at 
the  bottom  of  the  ocean,  uncheered,  unheard,  iinseen, 
with  the  tumultuous  waters  of  interest  and  of  passion 
raging  high  above  us,  yet  let  us  continue  to  labor  on.— 
for,  at  length,  like  them,  we  will  bring  a  rock-built  con- 
tinent to  the  surface,  and  upon  that  surface  God  will 
plant  his  Paradise  anew,  and  people  it  with  men  and 
women  of  nobler  forms  and  of  diviner  beauty  than  any 
who  now  live, —  with  beings  whose  minds  shall  be  illu- 
mined by  the  light  of  knowledge,  and  whose  hearts  shall 
l>e  hallowed  by  the  sanctity  of  religion. 

For  the  fulfilment,  then,  of  these  holy  purposes,  what 
labor  shall  we  undertake,  and  in  what  resolutions  shall  wo 
persevere  unto  the  end  ?  —  for  labor  and  perseverance  are 
indispensable  means  for  the  production  of  any  good  by 
human  hands. 


286  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OF   EDUCATION. 

In  the  first  place,  the  education  of  the  whole  people,  iu 
a.  republican  government,  can  never  be  attained  without 
the  consent  of  the  whole  people.  Compulsion,  even 
though  it  were  a  desirable,  is  not  an  available  instrument. 
Enlightenment,  not  coercion,  is  our  resource.  The  nature 
of  education  must  be  explained.  The  whole  mass  of  mind 
must  be  instructed  in  regard  to  its  comprehensive  and 
enduring  interests.  We  cannot  drive  our  people  up  a 
dark  avenue,  even  though  it  be  the  right  one  ;  but  we 
must  hang  the  starry  lights  of  knowledge  about  it,  and 
show  them  not  only  the  directness  of  its  course  to  the  goal 
of  prosperity  and  honor,  but  the  beauty  of  the  way  that 
leads  to  it.  In  some  districts,  there  will  be  but  a  single 
man  or  woman,  in  some  towns  scarcely  half  a  dozen  men 
or  women,  who  have  espoused  this  noble  enterprise.  But 
whether  there  be  half  a  dozen  or  but  one,  they  must  be 
like  the  little  leaven  which  a  woman  took  and  hid  in  three 
measures  of  meal.  Let  the  intelligent  visit  the  ignorant, 
day  by  day,  as  the  oculist  visits  the  blind  man,  and  de- 
taches the  scales  from  his  eyes,  until  the  living  sense  leaps 
to  the  living  light.  Let  the  zealous  seek  contact  and 
communion  with  those  who  are  frozen  up  in  indifference, 
and  thaw  off  the  icebergs  wherein  they  lie  embedded. 
Let  the  love  of  beautiful  childhood,  the  love  of  country, 
the  dictates  of  reason,  the  admonitions  of  conscience,  the 
sense  of  religious  responsibility,  be  plied,  in  mingled  ten- 
derness and  earnestness,  until  the  obdurate  and  dark 
mass  of  avarice  and  ignorance  and  prejudice  shall  be  dis- 
sipated by  their  blended  light  and  heat. 

But  a  duty  more  noble,  as  well  as  more  difficult  and 
delicate  than  that  of  restoring  the  suspended  animation 
of  society,  will  devolve  upon  the  physician  and  friend  of 
this  cause.  In  its  largest  sense,  no  subject  is  so  compre- 
hensive as  that  of  education.  Its  circumference  reaches 


ITS  DIGNITY   AND    ITS  DEGRADATION.  287 

around  and  outside  of,  and  therefore  embraces  all  other 
interests,  human  and  divine.  Hence,  there  is  danger 
that  whenever  any  thing  practical,  —  any  real  change,  — 
is  proposed,  all  classes  of  men  will  start  up  and  inquire, 
how  the  proposed  change  will  affect  some  private  interest, 
or  some  idolized  theory  or  opinion  of  theirs.  Suppose  a 
short-sighted,  selfish  man  to  be  interested  as  manufacturer, 
author,  compiler,  copyright  owner,  vender,  peddler,  or  puff- 
er, of  any  of  the  hundreds  of  school-books,  —  from  the  read- 
ing-book that  costs  a  dollar,  to  the  primer  that  costs  four- 
pence, —  whose  number  and  inconsistencies  infest  our 
schools,  and  whose  expense  burdens  our  community,  — 
then  he  will  inquire  which  one  of  all  these  books  will  be 
likely  to  meet  with  countenance  or  disfavor,  in  an  adjudi- 
cation upon  their  merits ;  and  he  will  strive  to  turn  the 
scales  which  confessedly  hold  the  great  interests  of  hu- 
manity, one  way  or  the  other,  as  their  inclination  will  pro- 
mote or  oppose  the  success  of  his  reading-book  or  his 
primer.  So  one,  who  has  entered  the  political  arena,  not 
as  a  patriot,  but  as  a  partisan,  will  decide  upon  any  new 
measure  by  its  supposed  bearing  upon  the  success  of  his 
faction  or  cabal,  and  not  by  its  tendency  to  advance  the 
welfare  of  the  body  politic.  In  relation,  too,  to  a  more 
solemn  subject,  —  how  many  individuals  there  are  belong- 
ing to  the  hundred  conflicting  forms  of  religious  faith, 
which  now  stain  and  mottle  the  holy  whiteness  of  Christi- 
anity, who  will  array  themselves  against  all  plans  for  the 
reform  or  renovation  of  society,  unless  its  agents  and  in- 
struments are  of  their  selection  !  And  so  of  all  the  varied 
interests  in  the  community,  —  industrial, literary. political, 
spiritual.  Whatever  class  this  great  cause  may  touch,  or 
be  supposed  likely  to  touch,  there  will  come  forth  from 
that  class,  active  opponents ;  or,  what  may  not  be  less 
disastrous,  selfish  and  indiscreet  friends.  I  have  known 


288  HISTORICAL   VIEW    OF   EDUCATION. 

the  carpenter  and  the  mason  belonging  to  the  same  school 
district,  change  sides  and  votes  on  the  expediency  of 
erecting  a  new  schoolhouse,  after  it  had  been  determined, 
contrary  to  expectation,  to  construct  it  of  brick  instead 
of  wood.  I  have  known  a  bookmaker  seek  anxiously  to 
learn  the  opinions  of  the  Board  of  Education  respecting 
his  book,  in  order  to  qualify  himself  to  decide  upon  the 
expediency  of  its  having  been  established. 

How,  then,  I  ask,  is  this  great  interest  to  sustain  itself, 
amid  these  disturbing  forces  of  party  and  sect  and  faction 
and  clan  ?  how  is  it  to  navigate  with  whirlwinds  above 
and  whirlpools  below,  and  rocks  on  every  side  ? 

In  the  first  place,  in  regard  to  mere  secular  and  busi- 
ness interests,  we  are  to  do  no  man  wrong ;  we  are  to 
show  by  our  deeds,  rather  than  by  our  words,  that  we  are 
seeking  no  private,  personal  aims,  but  public  ends  by 
equitable  means.  We  are  to  show  that  our  object  is  to 
diffuse  light  and  knowledge,  and  to  leave  those  who  can 
best  bear  these  tests  to  profit  most  by  their  diffusion. 
Let  us  here  teach  the  lessons  of  justice  and  impartiality 
on  what,  in  schools,  is  called  the  exhibitory  method ;  that 
is,  by  an  actual  exhibition  of  the  principle  we  would  in- 
culcate ;  and  as,  for  the  untaught  schoolboy,  we  bring 
out  specimens,  and  models  and  objects,  and  give  practical 
illustrations  by  apparatus  and  diagram  to  make  him  ac- 
quainted with  the  various  branches  of  study ;  so,  in  the 
great  school  of  the  world,  let  us  illustrate  the  virtues  of 
generosity,  magnanimity,  equity  and  self-sacrifice,  by  the 
shining  example  of  our  acts  and  lives. 

And  again  ;  in  regard  to  those  higher  interests  which 
the  politician  and  theologian  feel  called  upon  to  guard 
and  superintend,  let  us  show  them  that,  in  supporting  a 
system  of  Public  Instruction,  adapted  to  common  wants 
and  to  be  upheld  by  common  means,  we  will  not  en- 


ITS   DIGNITY  AND   ITS   DEGRADATION.  289 

croach  one  hair's  breadth  upon  the  peculiar  province 
of  any  party  or  any  denomination.  But  let  us  never 
cease  to  reiterate,  and  urge  home  upon  the  consideration 
of  all  political  parties  and  religious  denominations,  that, 
in  order  to  gain  any  useful  ally  to  their  cause,  or  worthy 
convert  to  their  faith,  they  must  first  find  a  MAN,  —  not 
a  statue,  not  an  automaton,  not  a  puppet,  but  a  free,  a 
thinking,  an  intelligent  soul;  —  a  being  possessed  of  the 
attributes  as  well  as  the  form  of  humanity.  For  what 
can  the  enlightened  advocate  of  any  doctrine  do,  if  he  is 
compelled  to  address  brutish  souls  through  adders'  ears  ? 
How  much  can  the  senator  or  the  ambassador  of  Christ 
accomplish,  in  convincing  or  in  reforming  mankind,  if 
they  are  first  obliged  to  fish  up  their  subjects  from  the 
fetid  slough  of  sensualism,  or  to  excavate  them  from 
beneath  thick  layers  of  prejudice,  where,  if  I  may  express 
myself  in  geological  language,  they  lie  buried  below 
the  granite  formation  ?  In  expounding  the  great  problems 
of  civil  polity,  or  the  momentous  questions  pertaining  to 
our  immortal  destinies,  how  much  can  they  effect,  while 
obliged  to  labor  upon  men  whose  intellects  are  so  halt- 
ing and  snail-paced,  that  they  can  no  more  traverse  the 
logical  distance  between  premises  and  conclusion,  in  any 
argument,  than  their  bodies  could  leap  the  spaces  between 
the  fixed  stars  ?  As  educators,  as  friends  and  sustainers 
of  the  Common-school  system,  our  great  duty  is  to  pre- 
pare these  living  and  intelligent  souls ;  to  awaken  the 
faculty  of  thought  in  all  the  children  of  the  Common- 
wealth ;  to  give  them  an  inquiring,  outlooking,  forth- 
going  mind ;  to  impart  to  them  the  greatest  practicable 
amount  of  useful  knowledge ;  to  cultivate  in  them  a 
sacred  regard  to  truth  ;  to  keep  them  unspotted  from  the 
world,  that  is,  uncontaminated  by  its  vices ;  to  train  them 
up  to  the  love  of  God  and  the  love  of  man ;  to  make  the 

VOL.  I.  19 


290  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OF   EDUCATION. 

perfect  example  of  Jesus  Christ  lovely  in  their  eyes  ;  and 
to  give  to  all  so  much  religious  instruction  as  is  compat- 
ible with  the  rights  of  others  and  with  the  genius  of  our 
government,  —  leaving  to  parents  and  guardians  the  di- 
rection, during  their  school-going  days,  of  all  special  and 
peculiar  instruction  respecting  politics  and  theology  ;  and 
at  last,  when  the  children  arrive  at  years  of  maturity, 
to  commend  them  to  that  inviolable  prerogative  of  pri- 
vate judgment  and  of  self-direction,  which,  in  a  Protes- 
tant and  a  Republican  country,  is  the  acknowledged  birth- 
right of  every  human  being. 

But  sterner  trials  than  any  I  have  yet  mentioned  await 
the  disciples  of  this  sacred  apostleship.  The  strong 
abuses  that  have  invaded  us  will  not  be  complimented 
into  retirement ;  they  will  not  be  bowed  out  of  society ; 
but  as  soon  as  they  are  touched,  they  will  bristle  all  over 
with  armor,  and  assail  us  with  implacable  hostility. 
While  doing  good,  therefore,  we  must  consent  to  suffer 
wrong.  Such  is  human  nature,  that  the  introduction  of 
every  good  cause  adds  another  chapter  to  the  Book  of 
Martyrs.  Though  wise  as  serpents,  yet  there  are  adders 
who  will  not  hear  us ;  and  though  harmless  as  doves,  yet 
for  that  very  harmlessness  will  the  vultures  more  readily 
stoop  upon  us.  We  shall  not,  indeed,  be  literally  carried 
to  the  stake,  or  burned  with  material  fires  ;  but  pangs 
keener  than  these,  and  more  enduring,  will  be  made  to 
pierce  our  breasts.  Our  motives  will  be  maligned,  our 
words  belied,  our  actions  falsified.  A  reputation,  for 
whose  spotlessness  and  purity  we  may,  through  life,  have 
resisted  every  temptation  and  made  every  sacrifice,  will 
be  blackened ;  and  a  character,  —  perhaps  our  only 
precious  possession  wherewith  to  requite  the  love  of 
family  and  friends,  —  will  be  traduced,  calumniated,  vili- 
fied ;  and,  if  deemed  sufficiently  conspicuous  to  attract 


ITS   DIGNITY   AND  ITS  DEGRADATION.  201 

public  attention,  held  up,  in  the  public  press,  perhaps  in 
legislative  halls,  to  common  scorn  and  derision.  What 
then  ?  Shall  we  desert  this  glorious  cause  ?  Shall  we 
ignobly  sacrifice  immortal  good  to  mortal  ease  ?  No  ; 
never!  But  let  us  meet  opposition  in  the  spirit  of  him 
who  prophetically  said,  "  If  they  have  persecuted  me, 
they  will  also  persecute  you."  For  those  who  oppose 
and  malign  us,  our  revenge  shall  be,  to  make  their  chil- 
dren wiser,  better,  and  happier  than  themselves.  If  we 
ever  feel  the  earthly  motives  contending  with  the  heaven- 
ly in  our  bosoms,  —  selfishness  against  duty,  sloth  against 
enduring  and  ennobling  toil,  a  vicious  contentment 
against  aspiring  after  higher  and  attainable  good, — 
let  us  not  suffer  the  earth-born  to  vanquish  the  immor- 
tal. What  though  it  cannot  be  said, 

"  A  cloud  of  witnesses  around 
Hold  us  in  full  survey," 

yet  the  voiceless  approval  of  conscience  outweighs  the 
applauses  of  the  world,  and  will  outlast  the  very  air  and 
light  through  which  the  eulogiums  of  mankind,  or  the 
memorials  of  their  homage,  can  be  manifested  to  us. 

What,  too,  though  we  cannot  complete  or  perfect  the 
work  in  our  own  ag-e.  For  the  consummation  of  such 
a  cause,  a  thousand  years  are  to  be  regarded  only  as  a 
day.  We  know  that  the  Creator  has  established  an  indis- 
soluble connection  between  our  conduct  and  its  conse- 
quences. We  know  that  the  sublime  order  of  his  Provi- 
dence is  sustained,  by  evolving  effects  from  causes.  We 
know  that,  within  certain  limits,  he  has  intrusted  the 
preparation  of  caxises  to  our  hands  :  and,  therefore,  we 
know,  that  just  so  far  as  he  has  committed  this  prepara- 
tion or  adjustm'ent  of  causes  to  us,  he  has  given  us  power 
over  effects  ;  — he  has  given  us  power  to  modify  or  turn 


292  HISTORICAL   VIEW   OF   EDUCATION". 

the  flow  of  events  for  coming  ages.  As  the  apostles  and 
martyrs  and  heroes,  who  lived  centuries  ago,  have  modi- 
fied the  events  which  happen  to  us,  so  have  we  the  power 
to  modify  the  events  which  shall  happen  to  our  posterity. 
We  are  not  laboring,  then,'  for  threescore  and  ten  years 
only,  but,  for  aught  we  know,  for  threescore  and  ten 
centuries,  or  myriads  of  centuries.  Through  these  im- 
mutable relations  of  cause  and  effect,  —  of  evolution, 
transmission  and  reproduction,  —  our  conduct  will  pro- 
ject its  consequences  through  all  the  eras  of  coming  time. 
Though  our  life,  therefore,  is  but  as  a  vapor  which  passeth 
away,  yet  we  have  power  to  strike  the  deepest  chords  of 
human  welfare,  and  to  give  them  vibrations  which  shall 
sound  onward  forever.  Corresponding  with  this  stupen- 
dous order  of  events,  we  are  endowed  with  a  faculty  of 
mind,  by  which  we  can  recognize  and  appreciate  our 
power  over  the  fortunes  and  destinies  of  distant  times. 
By  the  aid  of  this  faculty,  we  can  see  that  whatever  we 
undertake  and  prosecute,  with  right  motives  and  on  sound 
principles,  will  not  return  to  us  void,  but  will  produce  its 
legitimate  fruits  of  beneficence.  On  this  faculty,  then, 
as  on  eagles'  wings,  let  us  soar  beyond  the  visible  horizon 
of  time  ;  let  us  survey  the  prospect  of  redoubling  mag- 
nificence, which,  from  age  to  age,  will  open  and  stretch 
onward,  before  those  whose  blessed  ministry  it  is  to  im- 
prove the  condition  of  the  young ;  let  our  thoughts  wan- 
der up  and  down  among  the  coming  centuries,  and  par- 
take, by  anticipation,  of  the  enjoyments  which  others 
shall  realize.  If  we  ever  seem  to  be  laboring  in  vain,  — 
if  our  spirits  are  ever  ready  to  faint,  amid  present  obstruc- 
tion and  hostility,  —  then,  through  this  faculty  of  dis- 
cerning what  mighty  results  Nature  and  Providence  will 
mature  from  humble  efforts,  let  us  look  forward  in  faith, 
and  we  shall  behold  this  mighty  cause  emerging  from  its 


ITS  DIGNITY  AND   ITS  DEGRADATION.  293 

present  gloom  and  obscurity,  expanding  and  blossoming 
out  into  beauty,  and  ripening  into  the  immortal  fruits  of 
wisdom  and  holiness  ;  and  as  we  gaze  upon  the  glorious 
scene,  every  faculty  within  us  shall  be  vivified,  and  en- 
dued with  new  and  unwonted  energy. 

What,  then,  though  our  words  and  deeds  seem  now  to 
be  almost  powerless  and  hopeless  ;  what  though  bands  of 
noble  followers  should  rise  up  in  our  places,  to  be  suc- 
ceeded again  and  again  by  others,  whose  labors  and  sac- 
rifices shall  seem  to  fall  and  perish  like  the  autumnal 
leaves  of  the  forest;  —  yet,  like  the  annual  shedding  of 
that  foliage,  which,  for  uncounted  centuries,  has  been 
gradually  deepening  the  alluvium,  throughout  the  vast 
solitudes  of  the  Mississippi  valley,  increasing  its  depth  and 
its  richness,  so  shall  the  product  of  our  labors  accumu- 
late in  value  and  in  amount,  until,  at  last,  beneath  the 
hand  of  some  more  fortunate  cultivator,  it  shall  yield 
more  abundant  harvests  of  excellence,  and  righteousness 
and  happiness,  than  had  ever  before  luxuriated  in  the 
"  seed-field  of  Time." 


LECTURE    VI. 
1840. 


LECTURE    VI. 

ON  DISTRICT-SCHOOL  LIBRARIES. 

I  PROPOSE,  in  the  following  lecture,  to  consider  the  ex- 
pediency of  establishing  a  School  Library  in  the  several 
School  Districts  of  the  State. 

The  idea  of  a  Common-school  Library  is  a  modern 
one.  It  originated  in  the  State  of  New  York.  In  the 
year  1835,  a  law  was  passed  by  the  Legislature  of  that 
State,  authorizing  its  respective  school  districts  to  raise, 
by  tax,  the  sum  of  twenty  dollars  the  first  year,  and  ten 
dollars  in  any  subsequent  year,  for  the  purchase  of  a 
Common-school  Library.  No  inducement  was  held  out 
to  the  districts  to  make  the  purchase,  but  only  a  mere 
power  granted ;  and  the  consequence  was,  that  for  three 
years  this  law  remained  almost  a  dead  letter  upon  the 
pages  of  the  statute-book.  But  in  the  year  1838,  Gover- 
nor Marcy,  in  his  inaugural  address  to  the  Legislature, 
recommended  the  appropriation  of  a  part  of  the  income 
of  the  United-States  deposit  fund,  or  surplus  revenue, 
(so  called,)  to  this  object.  The  recommendation  was 
adopted,  and  the  sum  of  $55,000  for  three  years  was  set 
apart  to  be  applied  by  the  districts  to  the  purchase  of  a 
District-school  Library.  The  towns  were  also  required 
to  raise  an  equal  sum,  to  be  united  with  the  former,  and 
to  be  applied  in  the  same  way.*  How  much  more  does 

*  By  a  law  of  1 839,  this  provision  for  three  was  extended  to  Jive  years ; 
and  by  a  law  of  1843,  it  was  made  perpetual,  with  the  following  modifica- 
tions :  Whenever  the  number  of  children  in  a  district,  between  the  ages  of 

297 


298  DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

such  an  act  of  permanent  usefulness  redound  to  the 
honor  of  a  Governor  or  a  Legislature,  than  those  party 
contests  which  occupy  so  much  of  public  attention  for  a 
few  days  or  months,  but  are  then  forgotten,  or  are  only 
remembered  to  be  lamented  or  condemned  ! 

By  the  law  of  April  12,  1837,  the  Legislature  of  Mas- 
sachusetts authorized  each  school  district  in  the  State  to 
raise,  by  tax,  a  sum  not  exceeding  thirty  dollars  for  the 
first  year,  and  ten  dollars  for  any  subsequent  year,  for 
the  purchase  of  a  library  and  apparatus  for  the  schools. 
Few  districts,  however,  availed  themselves  of  this  power  ; 
and,  up  to  the  close  of  the  year  1839,  there  were  but 
about  fifty  libraries  in  all  the  Common  Schools  of  Mas- 
sachusetts. 

Being  convinced  of  the  necessity,  and  foreseeing  the 
benefits,  of  libraries  in  our  schools,  I  submitted  to  the 
Board  of  Education,  on  the  27th  day  of  March,  1838,  a 
written  proposition  on  that  subject.  In  that  communica- 
tion it  was  proposed  that  the  Board  itself  should  take 
measures  for  the  preparation  of  such  a  Common-school 
Library  as  should  be  adapted  to  the  wants  of  the  schools, 
and  should  at  the  same  time  be  free  from  objection  on 
account  of  partisan  opinions  in  politics,  or  sectarian  views 
in  religion.  I  had  been  led  to  suppose  that  one  of  the 
principal  reasons  why  so  few  libraries  had  been  purchased, 
under  the  law  of  1837,  was  the  jealousy  entertained 
against  each  other  by  members  of  different  political  par- 


five  and  sixteen  years,  exceeds  fifty,  and  the  number  of  volumes  in  the 
library  shall  exceed  one  hundred  and  twenty-five ;  or  when  the  number  of 
children  in  a  district,  between  the  same  ages,  is  fifty,  or  less,  and  the  num- 
ber of  volumes  belonging  to  the  library  shall  exceed  one  hundred,  then  the 
district  may  appropriate  the  whole  or  any  part  of  its  distributive  share  of 
the  "library  money"  "to  the  purchase  of  maps,  globes,  blackboards,  or 
other  scientific  apparatus,  for  the  use  of  the  school." 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES.  299 

ties  and  of  different  religious  denominations.  Though 
sensible  men,  and  friends  of  education,  almost  without 
exception,  were  earnest  in  their  desires  for  a  library,  yet 
they  either  had  fears  of  their  own,  or  encountered  ap- 
prehension in  others,  that  the  public  money  devoted  to 
this  purpose  of  general  utility  might  be  perverted,  in  the 
hands  of  partisans,  to  the  furtherance  of  sinister  ends. 
The  proposition  submitted  to  the  Board,  as  above  stated, 
was  accompanied  by  guards  designed  to  obviate  these 
difficulties.  It  was  favorably  received,  and  immediately 
acted  upon. 

Being  convinced,  however,  that  nothing  could  be  effected 
towards  the  accomplishment  of  so  grand  an  object,  except 
by  going  before  the  people  with  indubitable  facts  and 
irresistible  arguments,  I  set  myself  to  the  work  of  mak- 
ing extensive  and  minute  inquiries  throughout  the  State, 
respecting  the  number  of  public  libraries,  the  number  of 
volumes  which  each  contained,  their  estimated  value,  the 
general  character  of  the  books,  and  also  the  number  of 
persons  who  had  a  right  of  access  to  them.  I  obtained 
returns  from  all  but  sixteen  towns,  which,  being  small, 
had  an  aggregate  population  of  only  20,966.  The  result 
exceeded  my  worst  apprehensions.  I  found  that  there 
were  but  299  social  libraries  in  the  State.  The  number 
of  volumes  they  contained  was  180,028.  Their  estimated 
value,  $191,538.  The  number  of  proprietors,  or  persons 
having  access  to  them,  in  their  own  right,  was  only  25,705. 

In*  addition  to  the  above,  there  were,  in  the  State,  from 
ten  to  fifteen  town  libraries,  —  that  is,  libraries  to  which 
all  the  citizens  of  the  town  had  a  right  of  access.  These 
contained,  in  the  aggregate,  from  three  to  four  thousand 
volumes,  and  their  estimated  value  was  about  $1,400. 
There  were  also  about  fifty  school-district  libraries,  con- 
taining about  ten  thousand  volumes,  and  worth,  by 


300  DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

estimation,  about  $3,200  or  $3,300.  Fifteen  of  these  were 
in  Boston.  The  number  of  Public  Schools  in  the  State, 
at  that  time,  was  3,014. 

A  few  of  the  incorporated  academies  had  small  libraries. 

There  were  also  a  few  circulating  libraries  in  different 
parts  of  the  State, —  out  of  the  city  of  Boston,  perhaps 
twenty,  —  but  it  would  be  charitable  to  suppose  that, 
on  the  whole,  this  class  of  libraries  does  as  much  good  as 
harm. 

Of  all  the  social  libraries  in  the  State,  thirty-six,  con- 
taining 81,881  volumes,  valued  at  $130,055,  and  owned 
by  8,885  proprietors,  or  share-holders,  belonged  to  the 
city  of  Boston. 

It  appeared,  then,  that  the  books  belonging  to  the  public 
social  libraries,  in  the  city  of  Boston,  constituted  almost 
one-half,  in  number,  of  all  the  books  in  the  social  libraries 
of  the  State,  and  more  than  two-thirds  of  all  in  value  ; 
and  yet  only  abput  one-tenth  part  of  the  population  of 
the  city  had  any  right  of  access  to  them. 

I  have  said  above  that  the  whole  number  of  propri- 
etors, or  share-holders,  in  all  the  social  libraries  in  the 
State,  was  25,705.  Now,  supposing  that  each  proprietor 
or  share-holder,  in  these  social  libraries,  represents,  on 
an  average,  four  persons,  (and  this,  considering  the 
number  of  share-holders  who  are  not  heads  of  families, 
is  probably  a  full  allowance,)  the  population  represented 
by  them,  as  enjoying  the  benefits  of  these  libraries,  would 
be  only  a  small  fraction  over  one  hundred  thousand  ;'  and 
this,  strange  and  alarming  as  it  may  seem,  would  leave  a 
population,  in  the  State,  of  more  than  six  hundred  thou- 
sand, who  have  no  right  of  participation  in  those  benefits. 

I  omit  here,  as  not  having  an  immediate  connection 
with  my  present  purpose,  to  give  an  account  of  the  libra- 
ries belonging  to  the  colleges  and  other  literary  and  scien- 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES.  301 

tific  institutions  in  the  State.  A  detailed  account  of  these 
may  be  found  in  iny  Third  Annual  Report  to  the  Board 
of  Education. 

Do  not  the  above  facts  show  a  most  extraordinary  and 
wide-spread  deficiency  of  books  in  our  Commonwealth  ? 

But  even  where  books  exist,  another  question  arises, 
hardly  less  important  than  the  preceding,  as  to  the  suit- 
ableness or  adaptation  of  the  books  to  the  youthful  mind. 
One  general  remark  applies  to  the  existing  libraries  al- 
most without  exception ;  —  the  books  were  written  for 
men,  and  not  for  children.  The  libraries,  too,  have  been 
collected  by  men  for  their  own  amusement  or  edification. 
There  is  no  hazard,  therefore,  in  saying,  that  they  contain 
very  few  books,  appropriate  for  the  reading  of  the  young, 
either  in  the  subjects  treated  of,  the  intellectual  manner 
in  which  those  subjects  are  discussed,  or  the  moral  tone 
that  pervades  the  works.* 

*  As  descriptive  of  the  general  character  of  the  public  libraries  now  ex- 
isting in  the  State,  I  give  the  following  extract  from  my  Third  Annual 
Report : — 

The  next  question  respects  the  character  of  the  books  composing  the 
libraries,  and  their  adaptation  to  the  capacities  and  mental  condition  of  chil- 
dren and  youth.  In  regard  to  this  point,  there  is,  as  might  be  expected, 
but  little  diversity  of  statement.  Almost  all  the  answers  concur  in  the 
opinion,  that  the  contents  of  the  libraries  are  not  adapted  to  the  intellectual 
and  moral  wants  of  the  young,  —  an  opinion,  which  a  reference  to  the  titles, 
in  the  catalogues,  will  fully  sustain.  With  very  few  exceptions,  the  books 
were  written  for  adults,  for  persons  of  some  maturity  of  mind,  and  pos- 
sessed, already,  of  a  considerable  fund  of  information ;  and,  therefore,  they 
could  not  be  adapted  to  children,  except  through  mistake.  Of  course,  in 
the  whole,  collectively  considered,  there  is  every  kind  of  books  ;  but  proba- 
bly no  other  kind,  which  can  be  deemed  of  a  useful  character,  occupies  so 
much  space  upon  the  shelves  of  the  libraries,  as  the  historical  class.  Some 
of  the  various  histories  of  Greece  and  Rome  ;  the  History  of  Modern  Eu- 
rope, by  Russell ;  of  England,  by  Hume  and  his  successors  ;  Robertson's 
Charles  V. ;  Mavor's  Universal  History  ;  the  numerous  Histories  of  Napo- 
leon, and  similar  works,  constitute  the  staple  of  many  libraries.  And  how 
little  do  these  books  contain,  which  is  suitable  for  children  !  How  little  do 


302  DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

Now  the  object  of  a  Common-school  Library  is  to  sup- 
ply these  great  deficiencies.    Existing  libraries  are  owned 

they  record  but  the  destruction  of  human  life,  and  the  activity  of  those 
misguided  energies  of  men,  which  have  hitherto  almost  baffled  the  benefi- 
cent intentions  of  Nature  for  human  happiness  !  Descriptions  of  battles, 
sackings  of  cities,  and  the  captivity  of  nations,  follow  each  other,  with  the 
quickest  movement,  and  in  an  endless  succession.  Almost  the  only  glimpses 
which  we  catch  of  the  education  of  youth,  present  them  as  engaged  in 
martial  sports,  and  in  mimic  feats  of  arms,  preparatory  to  the  grand  trage- 
dies of  battle; — exercises  and  exhibitions,  which,  both  in  the  performer 
and  the  spectator,  cultivate  all  the  dissocial  emotions,  and  turn  the  whole 
current  of  the  mental  forces  into  the  channel  of  destructiveness.  The 
reader  sees  inventive  genius,  not  employed  in  perfecting  the  useful  arts,  but 
exhausting  itself  in  the  manufacture  of  implements  of  war.  He  sees  rulers 
and  legislators,  not  engaged  in  devising  comprehensive  plans  for  universal 
welfare,  but  in  levying  and  equipping  armies  and  navies,  and  extorting 
taxes  to  maintain  them,  thus  dividing  the  whole  mass  of  the  people  into 
the  two  classes  of  slaves  and  soldiers;  enforcing  the  degradation  and  ser- 
vility of  tame  animals  upon  the  former,  and  cultivating  the  ferocity  and 
blood-thirstiness  of  wild  animals  in  the  latter.  The  highest  honors  are 
conferred  upon  men,  in  whose  rolls  of  slaughter  the  most  thousands  of 
victims  are  numbered  ;  and  seldom  does  woman  emerge  from  her  obscurity 
—  indeed,  hardly  should  we  know  that  she  existed  —  but  for  her  appear- 
ance to  grace  the  triumphs  of  the  conqueror.  What  a  series  of  facts  would 
be  indicated,  by  an  examination  of  all  the  treaties  of  peace  which  history 
records  !  they  would  appear  like  a  grand  index  to  universal  plunder.  The 
inference  which  children  would  legitimately  draw,  from  reading  like  this, 
would  be,  that  the  tribes  and  nations  of  men  had  been  created  only  for 
mutual  slaughter,  and  that  they  deserved  the  homage  of  posterity  for  the 
terrible  fidelity  with  which  their  mission  had  been  fulfilled.  Rarely  do 
these  records  administer  any  antidote  against  the  inhumanity  of  the  spirit 
they  instil.  In  the  immature  minds  of  children,  unaccustomed  to  consider 
events  under  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  they  excite  the  conception  of 
magnificent  palaces  or  temples,  for  bloody  conquerors  to  dwell  in,  or  in 
which  to  offer  profane  worship  for  inhuman  triumphs,  without  a  suggestion 
of  the  'bondage  and  debasement  of  the  myriads  of  slaves,  who,  through 
lives  of  privation  and  torture,  were  compelled  to  erect  them  ;  they  present 
an  exciting  picture  of  long  trains  of  plundered  wealth,  going  to  enrich 
some  city  or  hero,  without  an  intimation,  that,  by  industry  and  the  arts  of 
peace,  the  same  wealth  could  have  been  earned  more  cheaply  than  it  was 
plundered ;  they  exhibit  the  triumphal  return  of  warriors,  to  be  crowned 
with  'honors  worthy  of  a  god,  while  they  take  the  mind  wholly  away  from 


DISTBICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES.  303 

by  the  rich,  or  by  those  who  are  in  comfortable  circum- 
stances. The  Common-school  Library  will  reach  the 

the  carnage  of  the  battle-field,  from  desolated  provinces,  and  a  mourning 
people.  In  all  this,  it  is  true,  there  are  many  examples  of  the  partial  and 
limited  virtue  of  patriotism  ;  but  few,  only,  of  the  complete  virtue  of  phi- 
lanthropy. The  courage  held  up  for  admiration  is  generally  of  that  ani- 
mal nature,  which  rushes  into  danger  to  inflict  injury  upon  another ;  but 
not  of  that  Divine  quality,  which  braves  peril  for  the  sake  of  bestowing 
good  —  attributes,  than  which  there  arc  scarcely  any  two  in  the  souls  of 
men,  more  different,  though  the  baseness  of  the  former  is  so  often  mistaken 
for  the  nobleness  of  the  latter.  Indeed,  if  the  past  history  of  our  race  is  to 
be  much  read  by  children,  it  should  be  rewritten ;  and,  while  it  records 
those  events,  which  have  contravened  all  the  principles  of  social  policy,  and 
violated  all  the  laws  of  morality  and  religion,  there  should,  at  least,  be 
some  recognition  of  the  great  truth,  that,  among  nations,  as  among  indi- 
viduals, the  highest  welfare  of  all  can  only  be  effected  by  securing  the  in- 
dividual welfare  of  each.  There  should  be  some  parallel  drawn  between 
the  historical  and  the  natural  relations  of  the  race,  so  that  the  tender  and 
immature  mind  of  the  youthful  reader  may  have  some  opportunity  of  com- 
paring the  right  with  the  wrong,  and  some  option  of  admiring  and  emulat- 
ing the  former,  instead  of  the  latter.  As  much  of  history  now  stands,  the 
examples  of  right  and  wrong,  whose  nativity  and  residence  are  on  opposite 
sides  of  the  moral  universe,  are  not  merely  brought  and  shuffled  together,  so 
as  to  make  it  difficult  to  distinguish  between  them ;  but  the  latter  are  made 
to  occupy  almost  the  whole  field  of  vision,  while  the  existence  of  the  former 
is  scarcely  noticed.  It  is  as  though  children  should  be  taken  to  behold, 
from  afar,  the  light  of  a  city  on  fire,  and  directed  to  admire  the  splendor  of 
the  conflagration,  without  a  thought  of  the  tumult,  and  terror,  and  death 
reigning  beneath  it. 

Another  very  considerable  portion  of  these  libraries,  especially  where 
they  have  been  recently  formed  or  replenished,  consists  of  novels,  and  all 
that  class  of  books  which  is  comprehended  under  the  familiar  designations 
of  "fictions,"  "light  reading,"  "  trashy  works,"  "ephemeral,"  or  "bubble 
literature,"  &c.  This  kind  of  books  has  increased,  immeasurably,  within 
the  last  twenty  years.  It  has  insinuated  itself  into  public  libraries,  and 
found  the  readiest  welcome  with  people  who  arc  not  dependent  upon  libra- 
ries for  the  books  they  peruse.  Aside  from  newspapers,  I  am  satisfied 
that  the  major  part  of  the  unprofessional  reading  of  the  community  is  of 
the  class  of  books  above  designated.  Amusement  is  the  object,  —  mere 
amusement,  as  contradistinguished  from  instruction,  in  the  practical  con- 
cerns of  life  ;  as  contradistinguished  from  those  intellectual  and  moral  im- 
pulses, which  turn  the  mind,  both  while  reading  and  after  the  book  is  closed , 
to  observation,  and  comparison,  and  reflection  upon  the  great  realities  of 
existence. 


304  DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

poor.  The  former  were  prepared  for  adult  and  educated 
minds  ;  the  latter  is  to  be  adapted  to  instruct  young  and 
unenlightened  ones.  By  the  former,  books  are  collected 
in  great  numbers,  at  a  few  places,  having  broad  deserts 
between  ;  by  the  latter,  a  few  good  books  are  to  be  sent 
into  every  school  district  in  the  State,  so  that  not  a  child 
shall  be  born  in  our  beloved  Commonwealth,  who  shall 
not  have  a  collection  of  good  books  accessible  to  him  at 
all  times,  and  free  of  expense,  within  half  an  hour's  walk 
of  his  home,  wherever  he  may  reside. 

My  friends,  I  look  upon  this  as  one  of  the  grandest 
moral  enterprises  of  the  age.  The  honor  of  first  embody- 
ing this  idea,  in  practice,  belongs  to  the  State  of  New 
York  ;  and  how  much  more  glorious  is  it  than  the  honors 
of  battle  !  The  execution  of  this  project  will  carry  the 
elements  of  thought  where  they  never  penetrated  before. 
It  will  scatter,  free  and  abundant,  the  seeds  of  wisdom 
and  virtue  in  the  desert  places  of  the  land.  It  will  prove 
as  powerful  an  agent  in  the  world  of  mind,  as  the  use  of 
steam  has  done  in  the  world  of  matter. 

I  propose  now  to  notice  a  few  particulars,  in  which  the 
usefulness  of  our  schools  will  be  so  much  enlarged  in 
extent,  and  increased  in  efficiency,  by  means  of  a  library, 
that  they  will  become  almost  new  institutions. 

The  idea  which  came  down  to  us  from  our  ancestors, 
and  which  has  generally  prevailed  until  within  a  few 
years,  was,  that  Common  District-schools  are  places  where 
the  mass  of  the  children  may  learri  to  read,  to  write,  and 
to  cipher. 

In  regard  to  the  first  of  these  studies,  —  Reading,  — 
how  imperfect  was  the  instruction  given  !  Good  reading 
may  be  considered  under  three  heads,  —  the  mechanical, 
or  the  ability  to  speak  the  names  of  words  on  seeing 
them  ;  the  intellectual,  or  a  comprehension  of  an  author's 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES.  305 

ideas  ;  and  the  rhetorical,  or  the  power  of  giving,  by  the 
tones  and  inflexions  of  the  voice  and  other  natural  lan- 
guage, an  appropriate  expression  to  feeling.  Now  most 
men,  whose  Common-school  education  closed  twenty  or 
twenty-five  years  ago,  will  bear  me  out  in  saying,  that 
the  mechanical  part  of  reading  was  the  only  branch  of 
this  accomplishment  which,  in  the  great  majority  of  our 
schools,  was  then  attended  to.  The  intellectual  part, 
which  consists  in  seeing,  with  the  mind's  eye,  the  whole 
subject,  broad,  ample,  unshadowed,  just  as  the  author 
saw  it,  was  mainly  neglected.  Consider  what  a  wonder- 
ful, —  what  an  almost  magical  boon,  a  writer  of  great 
genius  confers  upon  us,  when  we  read  him  intelligently. 
As  he  proceeds  from  point  to  point  in  his  argument  or 
narrative,  we  seem  to  be  taken  up  by  him,  and  carried 
from  hill-top  to  hill-top,  where,  through  an  atmosphere 
of  light,  we  survey  a  glorious  region  of  thought,  looking 
freely,  far  and  wide,  above  and  below,  and  gazing  in  ad- 
miration upon  all  the  beauty  and  grandeur  of  the  scene. 
But  if  we  read  the  same  author  unintelligently,  not  one 
of  the  splendors  he  would  reveal  to  us  is  pictured  upon 
the  eye.  All  is  blank.  The  black  and  white  pages  of 
the  book  are,  to  our  vision,  the  outside  of  the  universe 
in  that  direction.  I  never  attended  any  but  a  Common 
School  until  I  was  sixteen  years  of  age,  and  up  to  that 
time,  I  had  never  heard  a  question  asked,  either  by 
teacher  or  scholar,  respecting  the  meaning  of  a  word  or 
sentence  in  a  reading-lesson.  In  spelling,  when  words 
were  addressed  singly  to  the  eye  or  ear,  we  uttered  a  sin- 
gle mechanical  sound ;  and  in  reading,  when  the  words 
came  in  a  row,  the  sounds  folio.wed  in  a  row ;  but  it  was 
the  work  of  the  organs  of  speed i  only,  —  the  reflecting 
and  imaginative  powers  being  all  the  while  as  stagnant 
as  the  Dead  Sea.  It  was  the  noise  of  machinery  thrown 

VOL.  i.  20 


306  DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

out  of  gear  ;  and,  of  course,  performing  no  work,  though 
it  should  run  on  forever.  The  exercises  had  no  more  sig- 
nificancy  than  the  chattering  of  magpies  or  the  cawings 
of  ravens ;  for  it  was  no  part  of  the  school  instruction  of 
those  days  to  illustrate  and  exemplify  the  power  and  co- 
piousness of  the  English  language,  and,  out  of  its  flexible 
and  bright- colored  words,  to  make  wings,  on  which  the 
mind  could  go  abroad  through  height  and  depth  and  dis- 
tance, exploring  and  circumnavigating  worlds. 

Nor  was  our  instruction  any  better  in  regard  to  the 
rhetorical  part  of  reading,  which  consists  in  such  a  com- 
pass of  voice  and  inflection  of  tone,  as  tend  to  reproduce 
the  feelings  of  the  speaker  in  the  minds  of  the  hearers. 
There  is  this  difference  between  the  intellectual  and  the 
rhetorical  part  of  reading ;  —  the  intellectual  refers  to  our 
own  ability  to  perceive  and  understand  ideas,  arguments, 
conclusions  ;  —  the  rhetorical  refers  to  the  power  of  ex- 
citing in  others,  by  our  own  enunciation  and  manner  of 
delivery,  the  sentiments  and  emotions  which  we  feel,  or 
which  were  felt  by  the  author  in  whose  place  we  stand. 

Some  men  have  possessed  this  power,  and  some  men 
now  possess  it,  in  such  perfection,  that  when  they  rise  to 
address  a  concourse  of  people,  —  the  more  numerous  the 
concourse,  the  better  for  their  purpose,  —  they  forthwith 
migrate,  as  it  were,  into  the  bodies  of  the  whole  multi- 
tude before  them;  they  dwell,  like  a  spirit,  within  the 
spirits  of  their  hearers,  controlling  every  emotion  and  re- 
solve, conjuring  up  before  their  eyes  whatever  visions 
they  please,  making  all  imaginations  seem  substance  and 
reality,  —  rousing,  inflaming,  subduing,  so  that  if  they  cry 
War !  every  hearer  becomes  valiant  and  hot  as  Mars ; 
but  if  they  cry  Peace  !  the  fiercest  grow  gentle  and  mer- 
ciful as  a  loving  child.  This  is  a  great  art ;  and  when 
.the  orator  is  wise  and  good,  and  the  audience  intelligent, 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES.  307 

there  is  no  danger,  but  a  delicious  illusion  and  luxury  in 
its  enjoyment.  Who  has  not  gone  beyond  the  delight, 
and  speculated  upon  the  phenomenon  itself,  when  he  has 
seen  a  master  of  the  art  of  music  place  himself  before  a 
musical  instrument,  and,  soon  as  with  nimble  fingers  he 
touches  the  strings,  which,  but  a  moment  before,  lay 
voiceless  and  dead,  they  pour  out  living  and  ecstatic  har- 
monies, —  as  though  some  celestial  spirit  had  fallen 
asleep  amid  the  chords,  but,  suddenly  awakening,  was 
celebrating  its  return  to  life,  by  a  song  of  its  native  ely- 
sium  ?  When  such  music  ceases,  it  seems  hardly  a  figure 
of  speech  to  say,  "  the  angel  has  flown."  But  what  is 
this,  compared  with  that  more  potent  and  exquisite  in- 
strument, the  well-trained  voice  ?  When  Demosthenes 
or  Patrick  Henry  pealed  such  a  war-cry,  that  all  people, 
wherever  its  echoes  rang,  sprang  to  their  arms,  and  every 
peaceful  citizen,  as  he  listened,  felt  the  warrior  growing 
big  within  him,  and  taking  command  of  all  his  faculties, 
what  instrument  or  medium  was  there,  by  which  the  soul 
of  the  orator  was  transfused  into  the  souls  of  his  hear- 
ers, but  the  voice  ?  Yet  while  their  bodies  stood  around, 
as  silent  and  moveless  as  marble  statuary,  there  raged 
within  their  bosoms  a  turbulence  and  whirlwind  and  boil- 
ing, fiercer  than  if  ocean  and  ^Etna  had  embraced.  And 
so,  to  a  great  extent,  it  is  even  now,  when  what  they  ut- 
tered is  fittingly  read.  We  call  this  magic,  enchant- 
ment, sorcery,  and  so  forth  ;  but  there  is  no  more  magic 
in  it,  than  in  balancing  an  egg  on  the  smaller  end,  — 
each  being  equally  easy  when  we  have  learned  how  to 
do  it. 

None,  however,  of  the  beauties  of  rhetorical  reading 
can  be  attained,  unless  the  intellectual  part  is  mastered. 
The  mechanical  reader  is  a  mere  grinder  of  words.  If 
he  reads  without  any  attempt  at  expression,  it  is  mere 


308  DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

see-saw  and  mill-clackery ;  if  he  attempts  expression,  he 
is  sure  to  mistake  its  place,  and  his  flourishes  become  ri- 
diculous rant  and  extravagance. 

Now  no  one  thing  will  contribute  more  to  intelligent 
reading  in  our  schools,  than  a  well-selected  library  ;  arid, 
through  intelligence,  the  library  will  also  contribute  to 
rhetorical  ease,  grace,  and  expressiveness.  Wake  up  a 
child  to  a  consciousness  of  power  and  beauty,  and  you 
might  as  easily  confine  Hercules  to  a  distaff,  or  bind  Apol- 
lo to  a  tread-mill,  as  to  confine  his  spirit  within  the  me- 
chanical round  of  a  schoolroom,  where  such  mechanism 
still  exists.  Let  a  child  read  and  understand  such  stories 
as  the  friendship  of  Damon  and  Pythias,  the  integrity  of 
Aristides,  the  fidelity  of  Regulus,  the  purity  of  Washing- 
ton, the  invincible  perseverance  of  Franklin,  and  he  will 
think  differently  and  act  differently  all  the  days  of  his 
remaining  life.  Let  boys  or  girls  of  sixteen  years  of  age 
read  an  intelligible  and  popular  treatise  on  astronomy 
and  geology,  and  from  that  day,  new  heavens  will  bend 
over  their  heads,  and  a  new  earth  will  spread  out  beneath 
their  feet.  A  mind  accustomed  to  go  rejoicing  over  the 
splendid  regions  of  the  material  universe,  or  to  luxuriate 
in  the  richer  worlds  of  thought,  can  never  afterwards  read 
like  a  wooden  machine,  —  a  thing  of  cranks  and  pipes, 
—  to  say  nothing  of  the  pleasures  and  the  utility  it 
will  realize. 

Indeed,  when  a  scholar,  at  the  age  of  sixteen  or  eigh- 
teen years,  leaves  any  one  of  our  Public  Schools,  I  can- 
not see  with  what  propriety  we  can  say  he  has  learned  the 
art  of  reading  in  that  school,  if  he  cannot  promptly  un- 
derstand, either  by  reading  himself,  or  by  hearing  another 
read,  any  common  English  book  of  history,  biography, 
morals,  or  poetry ;  or  if  he  cannot  readily  comprehend 
all  the  words  commonly  spoken  in  the  lecture-room,  the 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL    LIBRARIES.  309 

court-room,  or  the  pulpit.  It  is  not  enough  to  understand 
the  customary  words  used  at  meal-time,  or  in  a  dram- 
shop, or  in  congressional  brawling.  I  know  it  is  the 
cry  of  many  a  hearer  to  the  speaker,  —  "  Come  down  to 
my  comprehension  ;  "  but  I  cannot  see  why  any  speaker, 
who  speaks  good  English  words,  —  whether  derived  origi- 
nally from  the  Saxon  or  the  Latin,  or  any  other  lawful 
source,  —  has  not  quite  as  good  a  right  to  say  to  the  hearer, 
"  Come  up  to  my  language."  When  a  clergyman,  or 
public  speaker  of  any  kind,  for  every  hour  that  he  spends 
in  thinking  out  his  discourse,  must  spend  two  hours  in 
diluting  it  with  watery  expressions,  in  order  to  have  it 
run  so  thin  that  everybody  may  see  to  the  bottom,  he 
loses  not  only  the  greater  part  of  his  time,  but  he  loses 
immensely  in  the  value  and  impressiveness  of  his  teach- 
ings. If,  in  the  heat  of  composition,  and  with  the  light 
of  all  his  faculties  brought  to  a  focus,  he  kindles  with  a 
thought  which  glows  like  the  orient  sun,  must  he  stop  and 
cut  it  up  into  farthing  candles,  lest  the  weak  eyes  of 
some  bat  or  mole  should  be  dazzled  by  its  brightness  ? 
But,  in  all  such  cases,  the  hearers  lose  still  more  than  the 
speaker.  By  the  half-hour  or  hour  together,  they  must 
receive  small  coins,  —  cents  and  four-penny  bits,  —  in- 
stead of  guineas  and  doubloons.  They  are  like  those  ig- 
norant, foreign  depositors  in  one  of  our  city  Savings 
Banks,  during  a  late  panic  in  the  money-market,  who 
rushed  to  the  counter,  demanding  immediate  payment ; 
but  when  pieces  of  gold  were  offered  to  them,  of  whose 
value  they  had  no  test,  and  with  whose  image  and  super- 
scription they  were  not  acquainted,  they  besought  the 
officers,  although,  as  they  supposed,  at  the  imminent  risk 
of  losing  their  whole  deposit,  to  pay  them  in  small  change, 
where  they  felt  at  home.  Just  so  it  is  with  those  who  are 
forever  calling  upon  the  speaker  to  come  down  to  their 


310  DISTEICT-SCHOOL   LIBB ARIES. 

comprehension,  in  regard  to  his  language  and  style  ;  for, 
if  he  obeys  the  call  and  goes  very  far  down,  in  order  to 
meet  them,  he  necessarily  leaves  much  of  the  grandeur 
and  beauty  and  sublimity  of  his  subject  behind  him. 
When  a  speaker  is  to  discourse  upon  any  great  theme,  — 
one  belonging  to  any  department  of  a  universe  which 
Omniscience  has  planned  and  Omnipotence  has  builded, 
—  ought  he  not  to  be  allowed  a  generous  liberty  in  the 
use  of  language  ?  Ought  he  not  to  be  allowed  a  scope  and 
amplitude  of  expression,  by  which  he  can  display,  as  on  a 
sky-broad  panorama,  the  infinite  relations  that  belong  to 
the  minutest  thing ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  should  he  not 
be  allowed  that  condensation  of  speech,  by  which  the 
vastest  systems  of  nature  can  be  consolidated  into  a  sin- 
gle word,  to  be  hurled,  like  a  bolt,  at  its  mark  ?  Is  it 
not  as  absurd  to  restrict  the  speaker,  on  such  occasions, 
to  mere  nursery  or  cradle  talk,  as  it  would  be  to  deny  sea- 
room  to  an  admiral,  and  require  him,  for  our  amusement, 
to  mano3iivre  navies  in  a  mill-pond  ? 

Suppose  a  company  of  Americans  should  go  to  France 
or  Germany,  and,  after  picking  up  a  few  words  in  hotels 
and  diligences,  should  attend  the  public  lecture,  the  play, 
or  the  services  of  the  cathedral,  and  should  there  demand 
of  the  speakers  to  keep  within  the  narrow  limits  of  their 
vocabulary,  —  I  ask,  whether  it  would  not  be  most  un- 
reasonable, on  the  one  side,  to  make  such  a  demand,  and 
impossible,  on  the  other,  to  comply  with  it  ?  And  how- 
would  the  case  be  altered,  though  the  company  should  re- 
side there  for  twenty-one  years,  if  they  still  remained  ig- 
norant of  the  language  of  the  country  ?  Now  this  is 
just  our  case.  Children,  of  course,  come  into  the  world 
with  just  as  little  knowledge  of  English  as  of  French  and 
German ;  and  if  they  remain  here  for  twenty -one  years, 
without  learning  English  words,  how  can  they  expect  to 
understand  English  speakers  ? 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL    LIBRARIES.  311 

I  do  not  mean,  by  these  remarks,  to  countenance  or 
palliate  the  folly  of  those  speakers  or  writers,  who  are 
always  straining  after  new  words,  or  swell:ng  forms  of 
expression  ;  and  whose  breadth  and  flow  of  style  do  not 
resemble  a  river,  but  only  a  tiny  stream  whipped  into 
bubbles.  It  is  occasionally  our  lot  to  encounter  men 
who  seem  to  have  imbibed  some  mathematical  notion, 
that  the  power  of  a  word  is  as  the  square  of  its  length, 
and  hence  they  suppose,  that  what  Horace  calls  seven- 
foot  words  *  must  have  have  at  least  forty-nine  times 
the  pith  of  monosyllables.  Such  diction  and  style  are  as 
offensive  to  men  of  good  taste  as  they  are  unintelligible 
to  the  illiterate.  But  I  do  mean,  by  these  remarks,  to 
give  a  definition  of  what  should  be  understood  by  the 
phrase,  —  learning  to  read.  Unless  pupils,  therefore,  on 
going  out  from  our  schools,  can  read  intelligently  any 
good  English  book,  and  understand  any  speech  or  dis- 
course expressed  in  good  English  words,  they  cannot,  with 
any  propriety,  be  said  to  have  learned  to  read.  And  as 
no  set  of  reading-books,  in  our  schools,  contains  any 
thing  like  the  whole  circle  of  words  which  are  in  common 
and  reputable  use  in  the  pulpit,  at  the  bar,  in  the  senate, 
or  in  works  of  standard  literature,  it  is  obvious  that  a 
school  library  is  needed  to  supply  the  great  deficiency, 
which  otherwise  would  necessarily  exist  in  the  language  of 
the  present  children  ;  and,  of  course,  in  the  language  of 
the  future  men  and  women. 

Justice,  in  reference  to  this  subject,  has  never  been 
done  to  the  clerical  profession.  They  habitually  address 
audiences,  the  most  promiscuous  in  point  of  attainment, 
—  and,  so  far  as  it  regards  the  various  qualities  of  lan- 
guage,—  its  scope,  its  majesty,  its  beauty,  its  melody,  its 

*  Sesquipedalia  verba. 


312  DISTRICT-SCHOOL  LIBRARIES. 

simplicity,  —  if  they  prepare  an  entertainment  of  milk 
for  intellectual  babes,  the  full-grown  men  die  of  thin 
blood  and  inanition  ;  —  if,  on  the  other  hand,  they  bring 
forward  strong  meat  for  men,  it  cannot  be  assimilated 
by  the  weak  organs  of  the  sucklings.  Hence  multitudes 
abandon  the  sanctuary  altogether ;  and  the  ignorant,  who 
need  its  teachings  most,  are  most  likely  to  desert  it.  How 
important,  then,  it  is,  for  all  the  divine  purposes  of  this 
profession,  to  teach  children  the  art  of  reading,  in  the 
true,  legitimate,  and  full  sense  of  that  phrase !  and,  for 
this  end,  a  good  school  library  is  indispensable. 

I  proceed  to  notice  another  grand  distinction  between 
a  Common  School  with  a  library,  and  a  Common  School 
without  one  ;  and  a  still  more  important  distinction,  be- 
tween a  State,  all  of  whose  Common  Schools  have  li- 
braries, and  a  State  in  which  there  are  none.  This  dis- 
tinction consists  in  the  power  of  libraries  to  enlarge  the 
amount  of  useful  knowledge  possessed  by  a  community. 
The  State  which  teaches  one  new  truth  to  one  of  its 
citizens  does  something;  but  how  much  more,  when,  by 
teaching  that  truth  to  all,  it  multiplies  its  utilities  and  its 
pleasures  by  the  number  of  all  the  citizens  !  The  saying 
of  Adam  Smith  has  been  quoted  thousands  of  times,  that 
he  who  makes  two  blades  of  grass  grow  where  but  one 
grew  before  is  a  public  benefactor.  But  he  who  doubles 
the  amount  of  knowledge  belonging  to  a  community  is  a 
public  benefactor  as  much  greater  than  he  who  doubles 
the  blades  of  grass  on  its  soil,  as  immortal,  life-giving 
truth  is  better  than  the  perishing  flowers  of  the  field. 
Could  we  examine  all  the  nations  which  are  called  civil- 
ized or  Christian,  we  should  not  find  one  individual  in  a 
thousand  worthy  to  bo  called  intelligent,  in  regard  to 
many  kinds  of  knowledge,  which  might  be  possessed,  and, 
for  their  own  safety  and  happiness,  should  be  possessed  by 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES.  313 

all.  We  should  not  find  one  individual  in  a  thousand 
who  knows  any  thing  instructive  or  pleasurable  re- 
specting the  wonderful  structure  of  his  own  body,  and 
the  still  more  wonderful  constitution  and  functions  of  his 
own  mind ;  and  respecting  the  laws,  —  the  certain  and 
infallible  laws,  —  of  bodily  health  and  mental  growth. 
There  is  not  one  individual  in  a  thousand  who  has  any 
knowledge,  so  definite  as  to  be  beneficial,  of  the  history 
of  our  race ;  or  who  knows  any  thing  of  the  sublimer 
parts  of  astronomy,  or  of  the  magnificent  and  romantic 
science  of  geology,  —  a  science  which  leads  the  mind 
backwards  into  time  as  far  as  astronomy  leads  it  out- 
wards into  space  ;  —  or  of  chemistry  with  its  applications 
to  the  arts  of  life  ;  or  of  the  principal  laws  of  natural  and 
mechanical  philosophy  ;  or  of  the  origin,  history,  and  pro- 
cesses of  those  useful  arts,  by  which  the  common  and 
every-day  comforts  of  life  are  prepared.  Now  respecting 
most,  if  not  all  these  subjects,  every  man  and  woman 
might  possess  a  liberal  fund  of  information,  which  would 
be  to  them  an  ever-springing  fountain  of  delight  and  use- 
fulness. But  the  uniform  policy  of  governments  has 
been  to  create  a  few  men  of  great  learning  rather  than  to 
diffuse  knowledge  among  the  many.  Literary  insti- 
tutions have  been  founded,  and  a  nation's  treasury  almost 
emptied  for  their  endowment ;  and  when  a  rare  and 
mighty  genius  has  appeared  in  any  part  of  the  kingdom, 
he  has  been  summoned  to  embellish  and  dignify  the 
court  or  university  ;  and  rarely  have  such  men  ever  sent 
back  a  ray  to  illumine  the  dark  places  of  their  nativity. 
The  policy  of  governments  has  absorbed  all  light  into  the 
centre,  instead  of  radiating  it  to  the  circumference.  And 
when,  by  the  combined  labor  of  learned  and  studious 
men,  —  amid  mountains  of  books,  amid  museums  and  ap- 
paratus and  all  the  appliances  of  human  art,  —  some  new 


314  DISTRICT-SCHOOL    LIBRARIES. 

law  of  nature  has  been  detected,  another  planet  dis- 
covered in  the  heavens,  or  another  curiosity  upon  the 
earth,  —  the  rulers  of  mankind,  the  depositaries  and 
trustees  of  a  people's  welfare,  have  celebrated  the  event 
with  jubilee  and  Te  Deum,  and  written  themselves  down 
the  Solomons  of  the  race.  Between  England  and  France, 
—  two  kingdoms  which  now  stand  and  have  long  stood  in 
the  van  of  science  and  art,  —  a  strong  national  jealousy 
exists  as  to  the  relative  superiority  of  their  great  men. 
England  boasts  that  it  was  her  Newton  whose  mighty 
hand  drew  aside  the  veil  from  the  face  of  the  heavens, 
and  revealed  the  stupendous  movements  of  the  solar  sys- 
tem. France  retorts,  that  it  was  left  to  her  La  Place  to 
perfect  the  Newtonian  discovery,  and  to  make  every  part 
of  the  celestial  mechanism  as  intelligible  as  a  watch  to  a 
watchmaker.  England  displays  her  achievements  in  the 
natural  sciences.  France  flaunts  her  trophies  in  the 
exact  ones.  England  points  to  her  useful  arts ;  France 
to  those  which  are  born  of  an  elegant  imagination.  Now 
all  these  inventions  and  discoveries,  so  far  as  they  go,  are 
well.  I  rejoice  in  the  existence  of  learning,  anywhere. 
I  contemplate  with  delight  those  imperial  structures, 
where,  for  centuries,  a  sincere,  though  often  an  unintelli- 
gent homage  has  been  offered  to  the  divinities  of  know- 
ledge. I  gaze  with  gladdened  eye,  through  the  long 
vista  of  those  galleries,  where  the  lore  of  all  former  times 
has  been  gathered.  It  charms  and  exalts  me  to  look 
upon  cabinets  which  are  enriched  with  all  the  wonders  of 
land  and  sea ;  and  upon  laboratories,  where  Nature 
comes  and  submits  herself  to  our  rude  and  awkward  ex- 
periments, teaching  us,  as  lovingly  as  a  mother  teaches 
her  infant  child,  and  striving  to  make  us  understand 
some  of  the  words  of  her  omnipotent  language.  I  look 
upon  all  these  with  delight,  for  they  are  treasuries  and 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES.  315 

storehouses  for  the  instruction  and  exaltation  of  mankind. 
Above  all,  I  hail  with  inexpressible  joy  whatever  dis- 
covery may  be  made  in  any  department  of  the  immense 
and  in  finitely- varied  fields  of  Nature  ;  for  I  know  that  all 
truth  is  of  God  ancKfrom  God,  and  was  sent  out  to  us  as 
a  messenger  and  guide,  to  lead  our  faltering  steps  up- 
wards to  virtue  and  happiness. 

But  still  I  mourn.  I  mourn  that  this  splendid  appa- 
ratus of  means  should  be  restricted  to  so  narrow  a  circle 
in  the  diffusiveness  of  its  blessings.  I  mourn  that  num- 
bers so  few  should  be  admitted  to  dwell  in  the  light, 
while  multitudes  so  vast  should  remain  in  outer  darkness. 
I  mourn  that  governments  and  rulers  should  have  been 
blind  to  their  greatest  glory,  —  the  physical  and  mental 
well-being  of  the  millions  whose  destiny  has  been  placed 
in  their  hands.  God  has  given  to  all  mankind  capacities 
for  enjoying  the  delights  and  profiting  by  the  utilities  of 
knowledge.  Why  should  so  many  pine  and  parch,  in 
sight  of  fountains  whose  sweet  waters  are  sufficiently 
copious  to  slake  the  thirst  of  all  ?  The  scientific  or  lite- 
rary well-being  of  a  community  is  to  be  estimated  not  so 
much  by  its  possessing  a  few  men  of  great  knowledge,  as 
by  its  having  many  men  of  competent  knowledge ;  and 
especially  is  this  so,  if  the  many  have  been  stinted  in 
order  to  aggrandize  the  few.  Was  it  any  honor  to  Rome 
that  Lucullus  had  Jive  thousand  changes  of  raiment  in 
his  wardrobe,  while  an  equal  number  of  her  people  went 
naked  to  furnish  his  superfluity  ?  How  does  the  farmer 
estimate  the  value  of  his  timber-lands  ?  —  surely  not  by 
here  and  there  a  stately  tree,  though  its  columnar  shaft 
should  shoot  up  to  the  clouds,  while,  all  around,  there  is 
nothing  but  dwarfish  and  scraggy  shrubs.  One  or  a  few 
noble  trees  are  not  enough,  though  they  rise  as  high  and 
spread  as  wide  as  the  sycamore  of  the  Mississippi,  but  he 


316  DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

wants  the  whole  area  covered,  as  with  a  forest  of  banians. 
And  thus  should  be  the  growth  of  these  immortal  and 
longing  natures  which  God  has  given  to  all  mankind. 
Each  mind  in  the  community  should  be  cultivated,  so 
that  the  intellectual  surveyor  of  a  people,  —  the  mental 
statistician,  or  he  who  takes  the  valuation  of  a  nation's 
spiritual  resources,  —  should  not  merely  count  a  few 
individuals,  scattered  here  and  there ;  but  should  be 
obliged  to  multiply  the  mental  stature  of  one  by  the  num- 
ber of  all,  in  order  to  get  his  product.  The  mensuration 
of  a  people's  knowledge  should  no  longer  consist  in  cal- 
culating the  possessions  of  a  few,  but  in  obtaining  the 
sum  total,  or  solid  contents,  in  the  possession  of  all. 
And  for  this  end,  the  dimensions  of  knowledge,  so  to 
speak,  must  be  enlarged  in  each  geometrical  direction ; 
it  must  not  only  be  extended  'on  the  surface,  but  deep- 
ened, until  the  whole  superficies  is  cubed. 

I  say  I  rejoice  that,  in  former  times,  facilities  and  in- 
citements for  the  acquisition  of  knowledge  have  been 
enjoyed  even  by  a  few  ;  but  if  this  is  to  be  all,  and  man- 
kind are  to  stop  where  they  now  are ;  if,  while  light 
gladdens  a  few  eyes,  tens  of  thousands  are  still  to  grope 
on  amid  the  horrors  of  mental  blindness ;  if,  while  a  few 
dwell  serenely  in  the  upper  regions  of  day,  the  masses  of 
mankind  are  to  be  plunged  in  Egyptian  night,  haunted 
by  all  the  spectres  of  superstition,  and  bowing  down  to 
the  foul  idols  of  appetite  and  sense  ;  —  if  such  were  the 
prospective  destiny  of  the  race,  I  would  pray  Heaven  for 
another  universal  deluge,  — 

"  To  make  one  sop  of  all  this  solid  globe,"  — 

to  sweep  all  existing  institutions  away,  and  give  a  clear 
space  for  trying  the  experiment  of  humanity  anew.     The 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL    LIBRARIES.  317 

atrocities  and  abominations  of  men  have  proceeded  from 
their  ignorance  as  much  as  from  their  depravity  ;  and 
rather  than  that  war  should  continue  to  devour  its 
nations ;  that  slavery  should  always  curse,  as  it  now  does, 
both  enslaved  and  enslaver;  that  fraud  and  perfidy 
between  man  and  man  should  abound,  as  they  now 
abound,  and  that  intemperance  should  rekindle  its  dying 
fires; — rather  than  all  this,  I  would  rejoice  to  see  this 
solid  globe  hurled  off  into  illimitable  space,  and  made  a 
tenantless  wanderer  of  the  "  vast  inane."  Now,  who 
does  not  see  that  to<  gem  the  whole  surface  of  the  State 
with  good  schools,  and  to  supply  each  school  with  a  good 
library,  will  be  the  most  effective  means  ever  yet  devised 
by  human  wisdom  for  spreading  light  among  the  masses 
of  mankind  ? 

There  is  another  respect  in  which  the  establishment  of 
a  library  in  every  school  district  will  add  a  new  and  grand 
feature  to  our  Common-school  system.  The  whole  object 
in  the  foundation  and  maintenance  of  our  schools,  hither- 
to, has  been  the  education  of  children,  —  of  minors. 
Ordinarily,  and  with  very  few  exceptions,  when  our  chil- 
dren have  reached  the  age  of  sixteen,  eighteen,  or,  at 
farthest,  of  twenty-one  years,  they  have  been  weaned 
from  the  schoolhouse  ;  and,  in  a  vast  proportion  of  cases, 
so  thoroughly  weaned,  too,  that  the  very  idea  of  the  milk 
of  this  mother  has  been  bitterness  to  their  palates  ever 
afterwards.  How  many,  or  rather  how  few,  adults  ever 
revisit  the  schoolhouse,  as  the  spot  of  early  and  endearing 
associations  !  How  few  have  been  drawn  to  it  by  the  tie 
of  tender  and  delightful  recollections,  as  a  far  wanderer 
is  drawn  homeward  to  visit,  with  tearful  eyes,  the  almost 
holy  spot  where  his  infancy  was  cradled,  where  he  slept 
upon  his  mother's  breast,  and  listened  to  the  counsels  of 
his  father!  No!  Vast  numbers  of  our  children,  when 


318  DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

they  have  served  out  their  regular  terra  in  the  old,  cheer- 
less schoolroom,  and  are  leaving  it  for  the  last  time,  have 
shaken  the  dust  from  off  their  feet,  as  a  testimony  against 
it.  Were  the  schoolroom  an  attractive  place,  why  should 
it  be  considered  as  so  extraordinary  an  exploit  in  a 
teacher  to  get  the  fathers  and  the  mothers  of  the  district 
to  visit  their  own  children  in  it  ?  Even  the  school  com- 
mittee, —  those  whose  official  duty  it  was  to  visit,  and 
watch  over  the  schools,. —  did  not,  until  recently,  make 
one-fourth  part  of  the  visitations  required  by  law.  With 
very  few  exceptions,  too,  it  was  ascertained  by  the  com- 
mittees, that,  although  the  law  had  prescribed  the  number 
of  visitations  which  they  should  make,  yet  it  had  not 
prescribed  their  length ;  and  the  consequence  was,  that 
the  longitude  of  their  visits  was  inversely  as  the  latitude 
of  their  construction. 

But  by  a  good  school  library,  the  faculty  of  the  school 
will  be  enlarged.  It  will  be  made  to  extend  its  enlighten- 
ing influences  to  the  old  as  well  as  to  the  young ;  because 
every  inhabitant  of  the  district,  under  such  conditions  as 
may  be  deemed  advisable,  should  be  allowed  to  partici- 
pate in  the  benefits  of  the  library.  Hence  the  school- 
house  will  be  not  only  a  nursery  for  children,  but  a  place 
of  intelligent  resort  for  men.  The  school  will  no  longer 
be  an  institution  for  diffusing  the  mere  rudiments  or  in- 
strumentalities of  knowledge,  but  for  the  bountiful  dif- 
fusion of  knowledge  itself.  The  man  will  keep  up  his 
relation  with  the  school,  after  he  ceases  to  attend  it  as  a 
scholar.  Though  he  has  mastered  all  the  text-books  in 
the  schoolroom,  yet  he  will  not  have  outgrown  the  school 
until  he  has  mastered  all  the  books  in  the  library. 

And  here  I  would  dispel  an  apprehension,  sometime* 
felt,  that  children,  although  supplied  with  suitable  books, 
will  contract  no  fondness  for  them.  Since  submitting  the 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBB  ABIES.  319 

plan  to  the  Board  of  Education,  for  the  establishment  of 
school  libraries,  I  have  sent  out  not  less  than  a  thousand 
letters  soliciting  information  respecting  the  existence, 
magnitude  and  quality  of  public  libraries  of  all  kinds  ; 
and  I  have  also  availed  myself  of  all  opportunities  fur- 
nished by  personal  intercourse,  to  ascertain  the  habits 
and  means  of  our  people  in  regard  to  reading.  After 
all  these  opportunities  for  information,  I  am  able  to  say, 
that  I  have  never  heard  of  a  single  instance  where  a  well- 
selected  library  for  children  has  run  down  or  run  out 
through  abandonment  or  indifference  on  their  part.  I 
have  heard  of  many  instances  where  grown  people,  dur- 
ing some  transient  spasm  of  literature  or  vanity,  have 
collected  a  library  for  themselves,  whose  books,  after  a 
short  time,  were  read,  as  bills  are  so  often  read  in  our  legis- 
lative bodies,  —  by  their  titles  only  ;  and,  at  last,  the  office 
of  librarian  has  been  merged  in  that  of  auctioneer.  But 
I  have  never  known  one  such  case  in  regard  to  children's 
libraries. 

But  suppose  an  unfortunate  case  of  neglect  or  abuse 
of  the  library  privileges  should  sometimes,  or  even  fre- 
quently, occur,  would  it  furnish  a  valid  argument  against 
the  measure  ?  Does  the  gardener  refuse  to  plant  his 
garden,  or  the  husbandman  his  fields,  because  every  seed 
that  he  casts  into  the  earth  does  not  spring  up  and  yield 
its  thirty,  its  sixty,  or  its  hundred  fold  ?  Nay,  if,  through 
accident  or  misfortune,  the  whole  expected  growth  fails, 
does  he  not,  with  undirninished  faith  and  alacrity,  com- 
mit new  seed  to  the  soil,  confiding  in  the  veracity  of  the 
Proraiser  and  the  fulfilment  of  the  promise,  that,  if  ye 
sow  bountifully,  ye  shall  reap  also  bountifully  ? 

There  is  another  advantage  of  a  good  school  library, — 
not  so  obvious,  perhaps,  as  those  already  mentioned, — 
but  one  which  I  deem  of  no  small  importance.  A  library 


320  DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

will  produce  one  effect  upon  school  children,  and  upon 
the  neighborhood  generally,  before  they  have  read  one  of 
the  books,  and  even  if  they  should  never  read  one  of 
them.  It  is  in  this  way :  —  The  most  ignorant  are  the 
most  conceited.  Unless  a  man  knows  that  there  is  some- 
thing more  to  be  known,  his  inference  is,  of  course,  that 
he  knows  every  thing.  Such  a  man  always  usurps  the 
throne  of  universal  knowledge,  and  assumes  the  right  of 
deciding  all  possible  questions.  We  all  know  that  a  con- 
ceited dunce,  will  decide  questions  extemporaneously, 
which  would  puzzle  a  college  of  philosophers,  or  a  bench 
of  judges.  Ignorant  and  shallow-minded  men  do  not  see 
far  enough  to  see  the  difficulty.  But  let  a  man  know  that 
there  are  things  to  be  known,  of  which  he  is  ignorant, 
and  it  is  so  much  carved  out  of  his  domain  of  universal 
knowledge.  And  for  all  purposes  of  individual  character, 
as  well  as  of  social  usefulness,  it  is  quite  as  important 
for  a  man  to  know  the  extent  of  his  own  ignorance  as 
it  is  any  thing  else.  To  know  how  much  there  is  that  we 
do  not  know,  is  one  of  the  most  valuable  parts  of  our  at- 
tainments ;  for  such  knowledge  becomes  both  a  lesson  of 
humility  and  a  stimulus  to  exertion.  Let  it  be  laid  down 
as  a  universal  direction  to  teachers,  when  students  are 
becoming  proud  of  their  knowledge,  to  spread  open  before 
them  some  pages  of  the  tremendous  volume  of  their  igno- 
rance. 

Now  those  children  who  are  reared  without  any  advan- 
tages of  intelligent  company,  or  of  travel,  or  of  books,  — 
which  are  both  company  and  travel,  —  naturally  fall  into 
the  error  of  supposing  that  they  live  in  the  centre  of  the 
world,  that  all  society  is  like  their  society,  or,  if  different 
from  theirs,  that  it  must  be  wrong ;  and  they  come,  at 
length,  to  regard  any  part  of  this  vast  system  of  the  works 
of  man,  and  of  the  wisdom  of  God,  which  conflicts  with 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES.  321 

their  home-bred  notions,  as  baneful,  or  contemptible,  or 
non-existent.  They  have  caught  no  glimpse  of  the  vari- 
ous and  sublime  sciences  which  have  been  discovered  by 
human  talent  and  assiduity ;  nor  of  those  infinitely  wise 
and  beautiful  laws  and  properties  of  the  visible  creation, 
in  which  the  Godhead  has  materialized  his  goodness  and 
his  power,  in  order  to  make  them  perceptible  to  our 
senses ;  —  and  hence  they  naturally  infer  that  they  know 
all  knowable  things,  and  have  "  learnt  out ;"  —  that  they 
have  exhausted  the  fulness  of  Deity,  and  into  their  nut- 
shell capacities  have  drained  dry  the  fountains  of  Omni- 
science. Now,  when  this  class  of  persons  go  out  into  the 
world  and  mingle  with  their  fellow-men,  they  are  found 
to  be  alike  useless  on  account  of  their  ignorance,  and 
odious  for  their  presumption.  And  if  a  new  idea  can  be 
projected  with  sufficient  force  to  break  through  the  in- 
crustations of  folly  and  prejudice  which  envelop  their 
souls,  and  with  sufficient  accuracy  of  aim  to  hit  such  small 
globules,  they  appear  as  ridiculous,  under  its  influence, 
as  did  the  mouse,  which  was  born  in  the  till  of  a  chest, 
and,  happening  one  day  to  rear  itself  upon  its  hind-legs 
and  to  look  over  into  the  body  of  the  chest,  exclaimed, 
in  amazement,  that  he  did  not  think  the  universe  so 
large !  A  library,  even  before  it  is  read,  will  teach  people 
that  there  is  something  more  to  be  known. 

An  incidental  advantage  will  often  accrue  from  this 
library  enterprise,  which  I  cannot  pass  by  in  silence. 
Suppose  the  most  intelligent  and  respectable  portion  of 
the  State  to  be  deeply  convinced  of  the  expediency  of  a 
school  library,  and,  therefore,  to  send  up  an  earnest  ap- 
peal to  the  Legislature,  for  some  assistance  or  bounty  to 
enable  the  districts  to  procure  one.  Suppose  that  the 
Legislature  should  offer  to  contribute  a  certain  sum,  on 
condition  that  the  districts  would  raise  an  equal  sum,  for 

VOL.   I.  21 


322  DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

the  purpose.  Doubtless,  on  the  part  of  a  large  number 
of  districts,  there  would  be  great  alacrity  in  complying 
with  the  conditions  prescribed.  But  still,  the  number  of 
districts  and  even  of  towns  will  not  be  inconsiderable, 
where  Ignorance  and  Mammon  bear  such  sway,  that  .the 
majority  of  voters  will  refuse  to  grant  even  this  pittance 
for  the  welfare  of  their  children.  It  is  in  this  class  of 
cases  that  the  incidental  advantages  to  which  I  refer  will 
be  realized.  In  most  of  such  districts  or  towns,  there 
will  be  some  individual  or  individuals,  —  of  narrow  means, 
but  of  a  boundless  soul,  —  who  will  at  once  give  the 
requisite  sum,  and  thus  secure  the  object.  Now  these 
occasional  or  special  opportunities  to  do  a  good  deed  are 
of  inestimable  value.  They  stir  up  the  generous  emotions 
of  our  nature  from  a  depth,  where  they  might  otherwise 
have  lain  stagnant  forever.  They  awaken  within  us  a 
delightful  surprise  at  our  own  capabilities  of  usefulness 
and  happiness.  Our  sordid  habit  is,  to  call  every  unex- 
pected occurrence  of  good  fortune  happening  to  ourselves 
a  god-send ;  but  there  is  no  such  god-send  as  the  divine 
prompting  to  do  good  to  others.  Let  an  unforeseen 
occasion  of  beneficence  be  presented  to  a  benevolent  man, 
and  let  the  merits  of  the  case  be  made  visible  to  him  by 
their  own  beautiful  light ;  —  a  resolve  to  act,  at  once 
flashes  upon  his  mind,  and  the  generous  deed  is  done  ;  — 
not  done  from  ostentation,  or  the  love  of  praise,  or  from 
any  low  or  sordid  aim ;  but  done  because  it  is  right  and 
lovely,  and  in  harmony  with  his  better  nature  ;  and  lo ! 
in  the  bosom  of  that  man  the  fountains  of  immortal  joy 
burst  open,  arid  such  peace  and  gladness  and  exaltation 
pervade  and  dilate  his  soul,  that  he  would  not  barter  one 
moment  of  their  fruition  for  an  eternity  of  selfish  pleas- 
ures. When  a  majority  of  the  district  belong  to  the  firm 
of  Hunks,  Shirk  &  Co.,  then  Mr.  Goodman  must  supply 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES.  323 

the  library,  and  the  next  generation  will  rise  up  and  bless 
him. 

The  effects  of  a  habit  of  reading,  in  furnishing  home 
and  fireside  attractions  for  children,  and  thus  keeping 
them  from  vicious  companions,  and  from  places  of  vicious 
resort,  are  so  obvious,  that  I  shall  not  here  dwell  upon 
them ;  but  content  myself  with  referring  to  one  more  of 
the  unenumerated  and  innumerable  advantages  of  a  well- 
chosen  library  for  our  schools ;  —  I  mean  the  efficacy  of 
good  books  in  expelling  bad  ones.  A  true  friend  of  our 
country  and  our  race  is  not  satisfied  with  knowing  that 
we  are  a  reading  people  ;  —  he  asks  impatiently,  what  it 
is  that  we  read.  That  there  is  an  alarming  amount  of 
vain  and  pernicious  reading  in  our  community,  no  observ- 
ing person  will  deny.  For  unchastened  imaginations  and 
perverted  morals,  there  is  a  fascination  in  accounts  of 
battles,  shipwrecks,  murders  and  piracies  ;  and  many 
people  gloat  over  those  demoralizing  police  reports  in  the 
newspapers,  in  which  the  foul  scenes  of  darkness  and 
depravity  are  brought  to  light,  and  made  themes  for  jest 
and  merriment.  But  have  we  taught  children  to  read, 
for  the  sake  of  enlarging  their  acquaintance  with  im- 
purity and  immorality  ?  Fiction,  too,  from  the  plump 
novel  of  two  volumes  to  the  lean  newspaper  story  of  two 
columns,  together  with  the  contents  of  light  and  fanciful 
periodicals,  constitutes  the  staple  reading  of  a  vast  num- 
ber of  our  people.  Now  I  believe  it  to  be  no  exaggeration 
to  say,  that  ninety-nine  parts  in  every  hundred  of  all  the 
novels  and  romances  extant  are  as  false  to  truth  and 
nature,  to  all  verisimilitude  to  history  and  to  the  affairs 
of  men,  as  though  they  had  been  written,  not  by  lunarians, 
but  by  lunatics  themselves.  I  mean,  that,  if  we,  as  men 
and  women,  were  to  act  as  novel-writers  make  their  men 
and  women  act,  the  results  upon  our  fortunes  and  lives 


324  DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

would  bear  no  resemblance  to  the  fortunes  and  lives 
of  the  fictitious  personages  they  describe.  The  novelist 
makes  godlike  heroes  and  benefactors  of  the  race  of  those 
who  never  studied  and  toiled  and  sacrificed  for  the  wel- 
fare of  mankind ;  and,  just  so  far  as  he  does  this,  he  is 
contradicted  by  the  testimony  of  universal  history  and 
experience.  His  works  are  often  bloated  with  a  maudlin 
sentiment,  wholly  unkindred  and  alien  to  that  healthy 
humanity,  which,  by  the  combined  action  of  intellect  and 
benevolence,  not  only  perceives,  but  fulfils,  the  law  of  love. 
Often,  too,  he  robes  impurity  in  the  garments  of  light, 
and  thus  sets  at  defiance  all  the  laws  of  the  moral  universe  ; 
or  he  deems  it  poetic  justice  to  reward  the  holy  sacrifices 
of  virtue  by  the  base  coin  of  wordly  honors  or  wealth. 
The  mind,  when  fed  on  mere  fantasies  and  etherealities, 
has  no  vigor  for  the  stern  duties  of  life ;  it  is  borne  away 
by  every  illusion,  like  a  bulrush  upon  the  tide. 

The  prevalence  of  novel-reading  creates  a  host  of  novel- 
writers  ;  and  the  readers  and  writers,  by  action  and  re-ac- 
tion, increase  the  numbers  of  each  other.  Hence  great 
capacities  for  usefulness  are  lost  to  the  world,  and  the 
most  important  of  human  duties  remain  unperformed. 
For  many  of  the  sons  and  daughters  of  Adam,  this  is  a 
world  of  perplexity  and  suffering  and  inexpressible  anguish ; 
it  is  a  world  where  innocent  nerves  are  laid  bare  to  all 
the  aggressions  of  want  and  disease,  and  where  men  sink 
into  pitfalls  of  ruin,  which  the  light  of  a  little  knowledge 
would  have  revealed,  and  from  which  kindly  counsels 
would  have  saved  them.  What  is  worst  of  all,  —  it  is  a 
world  where  guiltless  children  are  led,  as  by  the  hand, 
into  dangers  and  temptations ;  or  rather  they  are  propelled 
into  dangers  and  temptations  by  forces  of  which  they 
are  unconscious,  and  over  which  they  have  no  control ; 
and  in  these  perils  they  struggle  for  a  moment,  and  then 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES.  325 

sink  into  horrible  depths  of  crime  and  wretchedness, 
which,  by  an  unholy  influence,  harden  our  hearts  against 
them  as  much  as  they  harden  their  hearts  against  virtue. 
Society  is  spotted  all  over  with  moral  leprosy ;  and  hot 
tears,  more  bitter  than  the  waters  of  Marah,  are  furrow- 
ing innocent  checks  ;  and  while  this  actual  sin  and  suffer- 
ing abound,  we  cannot  spare  the  finest  geniuses  of  the 
race  to  spend  their  lives  in  creating  Worlds  of  Shadow  ; 
nor  can  we  allow  the  most  educated  of  our  people  to 
escape  from  the  great  work  of  solacing  and  redeeming 
mankind,  to  revel  in  the  brilliant  but  bodiless  realms  of 
fancy.  Every  hand  and  every  hour  should  be  devoted  to 
rescue  the  world  from  its  insanity  of  guilt,  and  to  assuage 
the  pangs  of  human  hearts  with  balm  and  anodyne.  To 
pity  distress  is  but  human  ;  to  relieve  it  is  Godlike.  But 
I  have  never  found  that  those  who  weep  most  freely  over 
fictitious  pain  have  keener  susceptibilities  than  others  for 
real  woe.  What  an  absolute  inversion  of  the  whole 
moral  nature  does  it  suppose,  to  find  delight  in  tracing 
the  fortunes  of  imaginary  beings,  while  living  in  the 
midst  of  such  actual  sufferings  as  ought  to  dissolve  the 
soul  into  a  healing  balm  for  their  relief,  without  recog- 
nizing their  existence.  It  is  said,  indeed,  that  Dickens,  — 
the  last  king  whom  the  world  of  novel-readers  has  seated 
upon  its  precarious  throne,  —  has  attributes  of  humani- 
ty which  distinguish  him  from  his  predecessors.  It  ig 
said  that  he  looks  over  and  beyond  the  splendid  circles  of 
opulence  and  fashion,  and  selects  his  objects  of  interest 
and  sympathy  from  among  the  hitherto  outcast  and 
forsaken  of  the  world.  But  I  must  say  again,  that  I  have 
not  seen  any  fresh  outflowing  of  compassion,  any  swell- 
ing of  the  scanty  rills  of  benevolence  towards  the  poor, 
the  ignorant,  the  helpless,  the  misguided,  among  the  gay 
and  affluent  circles  who  vindicate  their  homage  to  this 


326  DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

new  sovereign,  because  he  illumines  his  pages  with  the 
glow  of  a  kindlier  humanity.  To  those  who,  —  while 
surrounded  with  luxuries  and  superfluities,  and  defended 
by  golden  guards  against  cold  and  hunger,  and  all  the 
privations  and  temptations  of  poverty,  —  read,  breath- 
less and  tearful,  the  story  of  "  Little  Nell,"  let  me  say, 
there  is  a  "  Little  Nell"  in  the  next  street,  or  at  the  next 
door,  of  you  all,  —  some  hapless  child,  cast,  desolate  and 
forlorn,  upon  the  bleak  shores  of  Time,  having  no  friend 
in  the  abandoned  mother  that  bore  her,  and  wandering, 
through  all  the  years  of  infancy  and  childhood,  as  in  one 
perpetual  and  tempestuous  night  of  fear  and  suffering ; 
while  the  opulent  and  the  educated,  reclining  on  silken 
couches,  in  splendid  saloons,  expend  a  barren  sympathy 
over  woes  that  never  were  felt.  Throughout  our  land, 
in  city  and  in  country,  groups  and  companies  of  innocent 
children, —  the  offspring  of  intemperance  or  profligacy, 
—  are  tossed  for  an  hour  upon  the  weltering  tide  of  life  ; 
but  hearing  no  voice  of  sympathy,  seeing  no  hand  out- 
stretched for  their  deliverance,  they  sink  to  rise  no  more. 

As  when  the  young  of  land-birds,  in  the  spring, 
Quit  the  warm  nest,  and  spread  the  untaught  wing, 
Some  whirlwind  blast,  descending  from  the  north, 
Wheels  them  on  high,  and  drives  them  furious  forth 
Far  out  to  sea.    Alas,  the  fated  brood  ! 
The  empty  sky's  above ;  below,  the  yawning  flood. 
Backward  they  turn  to  win  their  native  vale, 
And  strive,  with  desperate  wing,  to  stem  the  gale. 
In  vain  !     They  fall,  by  fear  and  toil  opprest, 
Till  the  rude  wave  assaults  their  throbbing  breast. 
Once  more !  for  life !  they  mount  with  piteous  cry, 
Then,  one  by  one,  they  fall,  they  shriek,  they  die  ! 

Even  thus,  by  tens  and  by  hundreds,  perish  innocent  chil- 
dren, at  our  own  doors,  —  lost  to  all  the  delights  of  life, 
lost  in  the  deeper  perdition  of  the  soul,  —  through  lack 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL  LIBRARIES.  327 

of  human  sympathy  in  self-styled  Christians.  Such  chil- 
dren are  the  victims  of  temptations  and  exposures,  which,, 
to  all  moral  intents,  they  are  as  incapable  of  resisting,  as 
is  the  half-fledged  young  of  the  land-bird  to  defy  the 
mingled  might  of  ocean  and  storm.  Is  it  as  noble,  is  it 
as  like  the  Divine  Exemplar,  to  dote  over  imaginary  cre- 
ations of  loveliness  and  purity,  as  to  create  and  foster 
that  loveliness  and  purity  ourselves  in  hearts  otherwise 
perverted  and  lost  ?  To  describe  possible  happiness,  or 
linger  over  its  enchanting  delineations,  is  it,  or  can  it  be, 
like  rescuing  children  from  the  very  throat  of  the  whirl- 
pool which  is  carrying  them  down  to  destruction  ;  is  it 
like  bestowing  happiness,  by  our  own  efforts,  upon  our 
sorrowing  fellow-mortals  ?  Look,  my  friends,  for  one 
moment,  around  you,  and  see  what  things  God  accom- 
plishes without  our  assistance ;  then  look  again,  and  see 
for  the  accomplishment  of  what  things  God  honors  us  by 
demanding  our  aid.  To  combine  insensate  elements  into 
a  flower ;  to  spread  the  rainbow  across  the  dark  folds  of 
the  retreating  storm ;  to  emblaze  the  deep  recesses  of  the 
firmament  with  new  constellations ;  —  these  works  God 
has  left  to  blind  mechanical  and  organic  laws.  But  to 
rear  the  amaranth  of  virtue  for  a  celestial  soil ;  to  pale 
the  diamond's  glow  by  the  intenser  effulgence  of  genius ; 
to  pencil,  as  with  living  flame,  a  rainbow  of  holy  promise 
and  peace  upon  the  blackness  and  despair  of  a  guilty  life; 
to  fit  the  spirits  of  weak  and  erring  mortals  to  shine  for- 
ever, as  stars,  amid  the  Host  of  Heaven  ;  — for  these  di- 
viner and  more  glorious  works,  God  asks  our  aid  ;  and 
He  points  to  the  children  who  have  been  evoked  into  life, 
as  the  objects  of  our  labor  and  care.  One  drop  of  baptis- 
mal water  poured  upon  the  infant's  head,  from  the  holy 
font  of  wisdom  and  love,  will  quench  more  of  the  fires  of 
guilt,  than  an  ocean  of  consecrated  waters  can  afterwards 


328  DISTEICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

extinguish.  And  is  it  not  time  for  the  self-styled  disci- 
ples of  Christ  to  repel  the  bitter  irony  of  their  name  ?  Is 
it  not  time  for  them  to  imitate  the  Divine  Master  on  whose 
name  they  call,  and,  like  him,  surrender  the  pleasures  of 
luxury  and  sense,  that  they  may  go  about  doing  good  ? 
Is  it  not  time  for  them  to  seek  out  the  children  of  wretch- 
edness, —  and  so  much  the  more  as  they  are  the  more 
wretched,  —  and  fold  them  in  their  arms,  and  bless  them 
by  instruction  and  example  ?  The  garden  of  an  earthly 
paradise  for  mankind  can  never  be  entered  but  through 
the  Garden  of  Gethsemane.  Yet  where  are  they  who 
sweat  drops  of  blood  in  their  agony  for  the  welfare  of  the 
race ;  where  are  they  who  spurn  the  honors  and  distinc- 
tions of  an  earthly  ambition,  and  say,  of  the  proffered 
empire  of  the  world,  that  it  is  an  offence  ;  where  are 
they  whose  striving  soul  sleep  does  not  visit  at  the  com- 
ing-on  of  night,  whose  head  is  pillowless,  though  sur- 
rounded by  chambers  of  Oriental  magnificence,  and  who 
enter  the  path  of  duty  with  unfaltering  step,  although  in 
the  vista's  distant  perspective  there  stands  the  fatal  cross  V 
If  Peter  were  one  of  us,  and  should  stand  unconcerned 
in  the  midst  of  the  rising  generation,  and  put  forth  no 
helping  hand  to  succor  them,  he  would  need  no  oath  to 
seal  his  perfidy  to  his  Master,  —  forsworn  by  apathy 
alone ! 

Oh  !  how  forever  beautiful  and  divine  in  the  sight  of 
man  ;  how  holy  in  the  eye  of  Heaven ;  how  gladdening 
in  the  retrospect  of  all  coming  ages  ;  if,  instead  of  sur- 
rendering their  cultivated  powers  to  the  dreams  and  fan- 
tasies of  romance,  the  daughters  of  opulence  and  leisure 
would  awaken  to  the  realities  of  the  only  true  and  worthy 
existence,  and  would  seek  an  enduring  happiness,  — 
where  they  would  be  sure  to  find  it,  —  in  carrying  knowl- 
edge and  virtue  and  joy  to  the  children  of  poverty  and 


DISTRICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES.  329 

wretchedness  !  Let  them  lead  these  darkling  wanderers 
to  the  joyful  light  of  knowledge.  Let  them  shake  free 
the  wings  of  immortal  spirits,  now  so  clogged  with  the 
mire  of  earth,  that  they  cannot  soar  upward  to  heaven. 
Beneath  the  feet  of  such  angel  ministers,  as  they  go  on 
their  errands  of  mercy  and  love,  the  very  earth  is  hal- 
lowed ;  and  the  air  is  made  fragrant  and  luminous  by 
their  tones  and  smiles  of  affection.  Surely,  no  thanks- 
giving offered  to  God  can  be  so  grateful  as  deeds  of 
charity  done  to  suffering  childhood. 

But  how,  I  ask,  can  that  pernicious  reading,  which  has 
done  at  least  as  much  as  any  thing  else  to  separate  feel- 
ing from  action,  to  sever  the  natural  connection  between 
benevolent  impulses  and  benevolent  deeds,  to  dissociate 
emotions  of  pity  for  distress  from  a  desire  to  succor  and 
relieve  it,  —  how  can  the  flood  of  this  reading  be  stayed  ? 
I  answer,  that  much  can  be  done  by  the  substitution  of 
books  and  studies  which  expound  human  life  and  human 
duty  as  God  has  made  them  to  be.  Neither  by  the  force 
of  public  opinion,  nor  by  any  enactment  of  the  Sovereign 
Legislature,  can  the  noxious  works  which  now  infest  the 
community  be  gathered  into  one  Alexandrian  pile,  and 
by  the  application  of  one  torch,  the  earth  be  purified  from 
their  contaminations.  No  !  It  must  be  done,  if  done  at 
all,  —  in  the  expressive  language  of  Dr.  Chalmers,  —  "  by 
the  expulsive  power  of  a  new  affection."  A  purer  cur- 
rent of  thought  at  the  fountain  can  alone  wash  the  chan- 
nels clean.  For  this  purpose,  I  know  of  no  plan,  as  yet 
conceived  by  philanthropy,  which  promises  to  be  so  com- 
prehensive and  efficacious  as  the  establishment  of  good 
libraries  in  all  our  school  districts,  open  respectively  to 
all  the  children  in  the  State,  and  within  half  an  hour's 
walk  of  any  spot  upon  its  surface. 


330  DISTEICT-SCHOOL   LIBRARIES. 

NOTE.  —  On  the  3d  day  of  March,  1842,  the  Legislature  passed  a  Resolve 
offering  a  bounty  of  $15  to  each  school  district  in  the  State  which  would 
appropriate  $15,  — both  sums  to  be  expended  for  the  purchase  of  a  school 
library.  By  subsequent  Resolves,  enlarging  the  provisions  of  the  former,  it 
is  now  provided  that  where  a  district  contains  more  than  twice  sixty  chil- 
dren, three  times  sixty,  &c.,  it  may  draw  as  many  times  $15  from  the  State 
Treasury  as  the  number  sixty  is  contained  in  the  number  of  its  children, 
on  condition  of  raising  an  equal  sum.  Towns  not  districted  may  draw  in 
the  same  proportion.  A  great  majority  of  the  districts  in  the  State  have 
already  availed  themselves  of  the  privileges  of  these  Resolves. 


LECTURE    VII. 
1840. 


LECTURE    VII. 

ON  SCHOOL  PUNISHMENTS. 

MY  subject  is  Punishment,  arid,  more  especially,  COR- 
PORAL PUNISHMENT,  in  our  schools.  Important  questions 
are  agitated,  respecting  its  rightfulness  and  expediency, 
under  any  circumstances  ;  and,  if  rightful  and  expedient 
at  all,  then  respecting  its  mode,  its  extent,  and  the  circum- 
stances under  which  it  should  be  inflicted.  I  despair  of 
reconciling  the  conflicting  opinions  which  are  entertained 
on  these  topics  ;  but  may  I  not  hope  to  elucidate  some 
points  pertaining  to  them,  and  perhaps  to  lessen  the  dis- 
tance between  the  extremes  of  doctrine  now  existing 
amongst  us? 

All  punishment,  considered  by  itself,  is  an  evil.  In 
other  words,  all  pain,  considered  by  itself,  is  an  evil ;  and 
the  immediate  object  of  punishment  is  the  infliction  of 
pain.  I  think  that  no  one  who  does  not  altogether  deny 
the  existence  of  evil  will  deny  that  pain,  abstracted  from 
all  antecedents  and  consequences,  is  evil ;  and,  if  any 
one  denies  that  evil  exists,  I  answer  him  in  the  language 
of  Soame  Jenyns,  "  let  him  have  the  toothache,  or  get 
into  a  law-suit."  The  ultimate  object  of  punishment  is 
to  avert  an  evil  greater  than  itself.  We  justify  ourselves 
for  inflicting  it,  —  not  because  it  is  a  pleasure  to  us  to  do 
so,  —  for  that  would  be  diabolical ;  nor  wholly  because 
the  culprit  deserves  it ;  for  if  we  could  arrest  him  and 
reform  him,  as  well  without  the  infliction  of  pain  as  with 
it,  no  benevolent  man  would  prescribe  the  pain  ;  and, 


334  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

amongst  all  civilized  nations,  when  a  malefactor,  who  has 
been  condemned  to  death,  becomes  insane,  he  is  respited 
until  reason  is  restored  ;  although  it  is  clear  that  the  loss 
of  reason  cannot  expiate  tho  past  offence,  and,  there- 
fore, that  the  deserts  of  the  transgressor  remain  the  same 
as  before.  We  do  not  then  inflict  punishment  wholly 
because  it  is  deserved  ;  but  we  inflict  it  that  we  may 
ward  off  a  greater  evil  by  a  less  one,  —  a  permanent  evil 
by  a  temporary  one.  We  administer  it,  only  as  a  physi- 
cian sometimes  administers  poison  to  a  sick  man,  —  not 
because  poison  is  congenial  to  the  healthy  sj^stem,  nor, 
indeed,  because  poison  is  congenial  to  the  diseased  sys- 
tem ;  but  because  it  promises  to  arrest  a  fatal  malady 
until  appropriate  remedial  measures  can  be  taken.  Would 
any  person  be  upheld  or  approved,  by  a  sane  community, 
for  inflicting  the  pain  of  punishment  upon  a  child,  when 
he  could  have  produced  the  desired  object  as  well  without 
it  ?  Punishment,  then,  taken  by  itself,  is  always  to  be 
considered  as  an  evil.  The  practical  deduction  from  this 
principle,  is,  that  the  evil  of  punishment  should  always 
be  compared  with  the  evil  proposed  to  bo  removed  by  it ; 
and,  in  those  cases  only  where  the  evil  removed  prepon- 
derates over  the  evil  caused,  is  punishment  to  be  tolerated. 
The  opposite  course  would  purchase  exemption  from  a 
less  evil,  by  voluntarily  incurring  a  greater  one. 

These  principles  seem  clear,  and  for  their  support  I 
believe  we  have  the  concurrent  opinion  of  all  writers  of 
any  note,  on  jurisprudence  or  ethics,  and  of  all  sensible 
men.  In  following  out  these  principles  to  their  applica- 
tion, I  fear  I  may  fall  into  error  ;  and  I  proceed,  with 
unfeigned  diffidence,  to  a  further  development  of  my 
views.  Should  I  differ  from  others,  I  only  ask,  —  what 
I  am  most  ready,  on  my  own  part,  to  give,  —  a  candid 
reconsideration  of  the  points  of  disagreement. 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  335 

Let  me  premise,  that  there  are  two  or  three  peculiar 
difficulties  attending  the  discussion  of  this  subject.  If 
the  truth  lies,  as  I  believe  it  does,  in  the  mean,  and  not 
in  either  of  the  extremes,  then  those  ultraists  who  believe 
in  the  doctrine  either  of  no-punishment,  or  of  all-punish- 
ment, will  be  prone  to  seize  upon  arguments  or  conces- 
sions, on  their  own  side,  to  reject  those  on  the  other  side, 
and  thus  confirm  themselves  in  their  respective  ultraisrns  ; 
and  perhaps,  at  the  same  time,  bring  forward  a  charge  of 
inconsistency.  Probably  there  is  no  subject,  which  it  is 
more  difficult  for  a  speaker  to  balance  well  in  his  own 
mind,  and  to  leave  well  balanced  in  the  minds  of  his 
hearers. 

Again  ;  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  most  men  have 
formed  their  opinions  on  the  subject  of  punishment,  more 
from  feeling  and  less  from  reflection,  than  perhaps  on 
any  other  subject  whatever.  In  conversing  upon  this  topic, 
I  have  almost  uniformly  observed,  that  my  collocutor 
has  advanced  positive,  decided  general  opinions,  and  then 
adverted  to  some  particular  fact,  in  his  own  experience  or 
observation,  on  which  the  general  opinions  had  been 
founded.  But  sound  opinions  are  usually  the  result  of 
an  extended  survey  of  facts.  Here,  however,  the  inten- 
sity with  which  a  single  fact  has  been  felt  is  a  substitute 
for  numbers.  The  judgment  of  many  a  man  has  been 
decided, — if  not  enlightened,  —  respecting  the  whole 
subject  of  punishment,  by  one  vivid  impression  made, 
while  a  schoolboy,  on  his  back  or  hand.  Two  boys  fight. 
One  of  them  gets  seriously  injured.  The  schoolmaster 
punishes  the  victor.  The  vanquished  boy  and  his  parents 
approve  the  avenging  dispensation,  and  become  strenu- 
ous advocates  for  high-toned  discipline.  The  victorious, 
but  punished  boy,  with  his  parents,  question  the  policy, 
perhaps  deny  altogether  the  right  of  chastisement.  And 


336  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

thus  the  same  fact  gives  rise  to  opposite  opinions,  accord- 
ing to  the  relation  sustained  towards  it  by  the  parties. 

Probably  on  no  other  subject,  pertaining  to  Education, 
is  there  so  marked  a  diversity  or  rather  hostility  of  opin- 
ion as  on  this  ;  nor  on  any  other,  such  perseverance,  not 
to  say  obstinacy,  in  adhering  to  opinions  once  formed. 
Where  feeling  predominates,  there  is  a  strong  tendency 
to  ultraism ;  and  questions  respecting  punishment  are 
more  often  decided  by  sensation  than  by  reflection. 
Hence  the  extremes  to  which  opinions  run,  and  the  posi- 
tiveness  and  dogmatism  with  which  they  are  advocated 
by  the  partisans  of  each  side.  In  the  public  station 
which  it  is  my  lot  to  fill,  I  have  been  present  at  many 
discussions  on  this  subject,  and  have  held  conversation 
and  correspondence  respecting  it  with  a  great  number  of 
individuals,  in  all  parts  of  the  Commonwealth ;  and  I 
find  one  party  strenuously  maintaining,  that  improve- 
ment in  our  schools  can  advance  only  so  far  and  so  fast 
as  bodily  chastisement  recedes,  while  the  other  party  re- 
gard a  teacher  or  a  parent,  divested  of  his  instruments  of 
pain,  as  a  discrowned  monarch.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to 
say,  judging  from  their  tone  of  earnestness  and  confi- 
dence, that  there  are  men  who  would  destroy  all  trees 
and  shrubbery  in  order  to  abolish  the  means  of  flagel- 
lation, while  others  seem  devoutly  to  believe  that  a  good 
supply  of  the  materials  for  whipping  is  the  final  cause 
for  trees  growing ;  and  they  would  always  locate  a 
schoolhouse  in  convenient  vicinity  to  a  hickory  or  birchen 
grove, —  not  for  the  shade,  but  for  the  substance. 

The  first  point  which  I  shall  consider,  is,  whether  cor- 
poral punishment  is  ever  necessary  in  our  schools.  As 
preliminary  to  a  decision  of  this  question,  let  us  take  a 
brief  survey  of  facts.  We  have,  in  this  Commonwealth, 
about  one  hundred  and  eighty  thousand  *  children  be- 

*  Now,  (1845,)  above  192,000. 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  337 

tween  the  ages  of  four  and  sixteen  years.  All  these 
children  are  not  only  legally  entitled  to  attend  our  public 
schools,  but  it  is  our  great  desire  to  increase  that  attend- 
ance, and  he  who  increases  it  is  regarded  as  a  reformer. 
All  that  portion  of  these  children  who  attend  school, 
enter  it  from  that  vast  variety  of  homes  which  exist  in 
the  State.  From  different  households,  where  the  widest 
diversity  of  parental  and  domestic  influences  prevail,  the 
children  enter  the  schoolroom,  where  there  must  be  com- 
parative uniformity.  At  home,  some  of  these  children  have 
been  indulged  in  every  wish,  flattered  and  smiled  upon, 
for  the  energy  of  their  low  propensities,  and  even  their 
freaks  and  whims  have  been  enacted  into  household  laws. 
Some  have  been  so  rigorously  debarred  from  every  inno- 
cent amusement  and  indulgence,  that  they  have  opened 
for  themselves  a  way  to  gratification,  through  artifice  and 
treachery  and  falsehood.  Others,  from  vicious  parental 
example,  and  the  corrupting  influences  of  vile  associates, 
have  been  trained  to  bad  habits  and  contaminated  with 
vicious  principles,  ever  since  they  were  born ;  —  some 
being  taught  that  honor  consists  in  whipping  a  bojr  larger 
than  themselves  ;  others  that  the  chief  end  of  man  is  to 
own  a  box  that  cannot  be  opened,  and  to  get  money 
enough  to  fill  it.;  and  others  again  have  been  taught, 
upon  their  fathers'  knees,  to  shape  their  young  lips  to  the 
utterance  of  oaths  and  blasphemy.  Now,  all  these  dispo- 
sitions, which  do  not  conflict  with  right  more  than  they 
do  with  each  other,  as  soon  as  they  cross  the  threshold 
of  the  schoolroom,  from  the  different  worlds,  as  it  were, 
of  homes,  must  be  made  to  obey  the  same  general  regula- 
tions, to  pursue  the  same  studies,  and  to  aim  at  the  same 
results.  In  addition  to  these  artificial  varieties,  there 
are  the  natural  differences  of  temperament  and  disposi- 
tion. 

VOL.  I.  22 


338  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

Again ;  there  are  about  three  thousand  public  schools 
in  the  State,  in  which  are  employed,  in  the  course  of  the 
year,  about  five  thousand  different  persons,  as  teachers, 
including  both  males  and  females.  Excepting  a  very  few 
cases,  these  five  thousand  persons  have  had  no  special 
preparation  or  training  for  their  employment,  and  many 
of  them  are  young  and  without  experience.  These  five 
thousand  teachers,  then,  so  many  of  whom  are  unpre- 
pared, are  to  be  placed  in  authority  over  the  one  hundred 
and  eighty  thousand  children,  so  many  of  whom  have 
been  perverted.  Without  passing  through  any  transition 
state,  for  improvement,  these  parties  meet  each  other  in 
the  schoolroom,  where  mutiny  and  insubordination  and 
disobedience  are  to  be  repressed,  order  maintained,  knowl- 
edge acquired.  He,  therefore,  who  denies  the  necessity 
of  resorting  to  punishment,  in  our  schools,  —  and  to  cor- 
poral punishment,  too,  —  virtually  affirms  two  things  : 
—  first,  that  this  great  number  of  children,  scooped  up 
from  all  places,  taken  at  all  ages  and  in  all  conditions, 
can  be  deterred  from  the  wrong  and  attracted  to  the 
right,  without  punishment ;  and  secondly,  he  asserts  that 
the  five  thousand  persons  whom  the  towns  and  districts 
employ  to  keep  their  respective  schools,  are  now,  and  in 
the  present  condition  of  things,  able  to  accomplish  so 
glorious  a  work.  Neither  of  these  propositions  am  I,  at 
present,  prepared  to  admit.  If  there  are  extraordinary 
individuals,  —  and  we  know  there  are  such,  —  so  singu- 
larly gifted  with  talent  and  resources,  and  with  the  divine 
quality  of  love,  that  they  can  win  the  affection,  and,  by 
controlling  the  heart,  can  control  the  conduct  of  children, 
who,  for  years,  have  been  addicted  to  lie,  to  cheat,  to 
swear,  to  steal,  to  fight,  still  I  do  not  believe  there  are  now 
five  thousand  such  individuals  in  the  State,  whose  heaven- 
ly services  can  be  obtained  for  this  transforming  work. 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  339 

And  it  is  useless,  or  worse  than  useless,  to  say,  that  such 
or  such  a  thing  can  be  done,  and  done  immediately,  with- 
out pointing  out  the  agents  by  whom  it  can  be  done. 
One  who  affirms  that  a  thing  can  be  done,  without  any 
reference  to  the  persons  who  can  do  it,  must  be  thinking 
of  miracles.  If  the  position  were,  that  children  may  be 
so  educated  from  their  birth,  and  teachers  may  be  so 
trained  for  their  calling,  as  to  supersede  the  necessity  of 
corporal  punishment,  except  in  cases  decidedly  monstrous, 
then  I  should  have  no  doubt  of  its  truth ;  but  such  a 
position  muse  have  reference  to  some  future  period,  which 
we  should  strive  to  hasten,  but  ought  not  to  anticipate. 

Coinciding,  then,  with  those  who  assert  the  necessity 
of  occasional  punishment,  and  even  of  occasional  corpo- 
ral punishment,  in  our  schools,  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
more  strenuous  of  its  advocates  are  disposed  to  give  too 
latitudinarian  a  construction  to  one  argument  in  its  favor. 
They  quote  and  apply,  as  though  there  were  no  qualifica- 
tion or  limit  to  their  applicability,  such  passages  as  these 
from  the  Proverbs  of  Solomon  :  —  "  He  that  spare th  the 
rod  hateth  his  son,  but  he  that  loveth  him  chastiseth  him 
betimes."  "  Foolishness  is  bound  in  the  heart  of  a  child, 
but  the  rod  of  correction  shall  drive  it  far  from  him." 
"  Withhold  not  correction  from  the  child,  for  if  thou 
beatest  him  with  the  rod,  he  shall  not  die."  "  Thou 
shalt  beat  him  with  a  rod,  and  shalt  deliver  his  soul  from 
hell."  "  The  rod  and  reproof  give  wisdom,"  &c.,  <fec. 
Now  if  these  passages,  and  such  as  these,  are  applicable, 
in  their  unqualified  and  literal  sense,  to  our  times,  then, 
indeed,  we  must  admit  that  the  rod  is  the  emblem  of  all 
the  Christian  graces.  But,  by  the  Mosaic  law,  he  that 
smote  his  father  or  his  mother  was  to  be  put  to  deatli  : 
and  why  is  there  not  as  much  reason  to  suppose  that  the 
latter  of  these  commands  remains  unabrogated  and  un- 


340  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

qualified,  as  well  as  the  former;  and,  therefore,  that  the 
true  remedy  for  those  who  now  make  forcible  resistance 
to  parental  control,  is,  not  the  House  of  Reformation 
for  juvenile  offenders,  but  the  gallows  ?  But  can  any 
one  suppose  that  the  passages  above  cited,  and  others  of  a 
kindred  nature,  were  to  be  taken  without  any  qualifica- 
tion, even  in  the  age  in  which  they  were  written  ?  Can 
any  one  suppose  that  they  were  designed  for  all  children 
alike,  and  to  be  exclusive  of  all  other  practicable  means 
to  deter  from  wrong-doing  ?  And  yet,  there  is  no  express 
limitation.  If  alike  applicable  to  all  children,  at  that 
time,  and  if  they  remain  unmodified,  then  they  are  ap- 
plicable to  all  children,  and  alike,  at  the  present  time. 
But  again,  I  say,  can  any  one  suppose  that  the  domestic 
discipline  of  a  people,  like  the  stiff-necked  Jews,  so  ac- 
customed to  spectacles  and  histories  of  blood  and  car- 
nage ;  by  whose  code  so  many  offences  were  capital ;  who 
massacred  men,  women  and  children, — whole  cities  at 
a  time,  —  and  sawed  asunder  their  prisoners,  and  tore 
them  to  pieces  under  harrows  of  iron  ;  —  can  any  one 
suppose  that  modes  of  parental  discipline,  in  a  land  rife 
and  red  with  such  spectacles,  are  to  be  literally  copied  in 
a  state  of  civilization  so  different  as  ours,  without  the 
most  positive  and  unambiguous  injunctions  ?  One  fact  is 
worthy  of  remark  in  passing.  If  the  doctrines  of  Solo- 
mon are  to  be  taken  literally,  then  he  must  have  departed 
from  them  most  egregiously,  in  regard  to  his  own  house- 
hold ;  or  those  doctrines  must  have  failed  of  their  intend- 
ed effect,  for  his  son  and  his  grandson  proved  to  be  two 
of  the  most  atrocious  and  heaven-contemning  sinners 
that  ever  sat  upon  the  throne  at  Jerusalem. 

There  is  one  school,  however,  where  I  would  give  to 
these  declarations  of  Solomon  the  freest  interpretation, 
applying  them  to  all  its  pupils,  and  shivering  rods  by  the 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  341 

bundle,  —  that  is,  the  School  for  Scandal.    There,  let  the 
motto  be,  "  Lay  on,  Macduff." 

But  a  conclusion  in  favor  of  the  rightfulness  or  admis- 
sibility  of  punishment,  in  school,  does  nothing  towards 
sanctioning  an  indefinite  amount  of  it.  Its  rightfulness 
is  limited  by  its  object ;  and  its  only  justifiable  object  is  to 
restrain  from  the  commission  of  offences,  until  remedial 
means  can  be  brought  to  bear  upon  the  offender.  Be- 
yond this  limit,  punishment  becomes  punishable  itself. 
The  object  of  punishment  is,  prevention  from  evil;  it 
never  can  be  made  impulsive  to  good.  Its  office  is  to 
seize  upon  the  contemiier  of  laws,  and  stop  him  in  his 
career  of  wrong,  and  hold  him  still,  until  by  earnest  ex- 
postulation, by  kind  advice,  by  affectionate  persuasion,  by 
a  clear  display  of  the  nature  of  the  offence  committed, 
and  the  duty  and  the  benefits  of  an  opposite  course,  the 
offender  can  be  led  to  inward  repentance,  and  to  resolu- 
tions of  amendment.  To  produce  such  repentance  and 
resolutions,  is  a  work  of  time,  of  skill,  of  wisdom,  of 
sympathy.  It  is  a  work  which  cannot  be  done  in  a  min- 
ute, and  it  is  because  it  cannot  be  done  in  a  minute,  that 
punishment  becomes  justifiable,  as  a  means  of  preventing 
a  continuance  or  repetition  of  the  wrong,  until  a  refor- 
mation can  be  effected  in  the  culprit's  mind.  In  all  cases, 
therefore,  the  very  fact  of  punishment  supposes  that  a 
great  deal  else  is  to  be  done.  By  punishment,  the  of- 
fender is  intercepted  in  the  commission  or  the  pursuit  of 
wrong ;  but  it  is  a  wholly  different  task,  and  accomplished 
by  wholly  different  means,  to  bring  him  back  to  the  right, 
and  to  make  him  see  it  and  love  it.  Whoever,  then, 
inflicts  punishment,  and  stops  there,  omits  the  weighti- 
est part  of  his  duty ;  and  such  omission  goes  far  to  take 
away  all  justification  for  the  punishment  itself. 

I  have  said  that  puniskment,  in  itself,  and  abstracted 


342  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

from  its  hoped-for  consequences,  is  always  an  evil.  I  wish 
to  add  a  few  considerations  showing  that  it  is  a  very 
great  evil. 

Punishment  excites  fear ;  it  is,  indeed,  the  primary 
object  of  -punishment  to  excite  fear ;  and  fear  is  a  most 
debasing,  dementalizing  passion.  It  may  be  proper  to 
say,  that  I  use  the  word  fear,  in  this  connection,  as  im- 
plying an  intense  activity  of  cautiousness,  or  apprehension 
for  personal  safety ;  and  not  as  partaking  at  all  of  the 
idea  of  reverence  or  awe,  in  which  sense  it  is  sometimes 
used,  in  reference  to  the  Supreme  Being,  —  as  when  it  is 
said,  "  The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom." 
It  is  the  former  species  of  fear  only  that  is  appealed  to  by 
the  infliction  of  pain,  and  not  one  of  the  virtues  ever 
grows  under  the  influence  of  that  kind  of  fear.  Such 
fear  may  check  the  growth  of  vices,  it  is  true  ;  and  this 
is  the  strongest  remark  that  can  be  made  in  its  defence  ; 
but  it  has,  at  the  same  time,  a  direct  tendency  to  check 
the  growth  of  every  virtue,  because  fear  of  pain  is  not 
an  atmosphere  in  which  the  virtues  flourish  ;  so  that  even 
the  negative  good  which  it  produces,  in  deterring  from 
wrong,  is  accompanied  by  the  infliction  of  some  positive 
harm.  Let  any  person  revert  to  his  own  experience,  and 
then  answer  the  question,  whether  he  was  as  competent 
to  think  clearly,  or  to  act  wisely,  when  under  the  influ- 
ence of  fear,  as  when  calm  and  self-possessed.  Fear  may 
make  a  man  run  faster,  but  it  is  always  from,  not  towards 
the  post  of  duty.  Look  at  a  man  in  an  agony  of  fear  ; 
he  is  powerless,  paralyzed,  bereft  of  his  senses,  and  almost 
reduced  to  idiocy,  so  that,  for  the  time  being,  he  might  as 
well  be  without  limbs  and  without  faculties  as  to  have 
them.  It  is  said  that  even  the  hair  of  the  head  will  turn 
gray,  in  five  minutes,  under  the  boiling  bleachery  of  a 
paroxysm  of  fear. .  There  have  been  many  cases  where 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  343 

adults,  —  men  whose  minds  had  acquired  some  constancy 
and  firmness,  —  have  been  made  fools  for  life  by  sudden 
fright,  —  annulled  at  once,  their  brains  turned  into  ashes 
by  its  consuming  fires.  And  if  such  are  the  consequences 
of  intense  fear  in  grown  men,  what  must  be  the  effect 
upon  the  delicate  texture  of  a  child's  brain,  when,  with 
weapon  in  hand,  a  brawny,  whiskered  madman  flies  at 
the  object  of  his  wrath,  as  a  fierce  kite  pounces  upon  a 
timorous  dove  ?  Yet  who  of  us  that  has  reached  middle 
age  has  not  seen  these  atrocities  committed  against  chil- 
dren, again  and  again  ? 

Another  consideration,  showing  punishment  to  be  a 
very  great  evil,  is,  that  the  fear  of  bodily  pain,  which  it 
proposes,  makes  the  character  pusillanimous  and  ignoble. 
Children  should  be  trained  to  a  disregard,  and  even  a 
contempt,  of  bodily  pain ;  so  that  they  may  not  be  un- 
nerved and  unmanned  at  the  very  exigencies,  when,  in 
after-life,  fortitude  and  intrepidity  become  indispensable 
to  the  performance  of  duty.  Some  foolishly-tender  par- 
ents commit  a  great  mistake  when  they  fuss  and  flurry, 
and  gather  the  whole  household  around,  at  every  little 
rub  or  scratch  received  by  a  child  ;  and  bring  out  their 
apparatus  of  lint  and  liniment,  —  enough  for  the  surgeon 
of  a  man-of-war,  in  a  naval  engagement.  Sensitiveness 
to  bodily  pain  should  be  discountenanced,  because  it  im- 
pairs manliness  and  steadfastness  of  character.  Children 
should  be  taught  that  corporal  suffering,  and  imprison- 
ment, and  death  itself,  are  nothing,  compared  with  loyalty 
to  truth  and  the  Godlike  excellence  of  well-doing,  so  that 
when  they  become  men  they  will  be  able  to  march,  with 
unfaltering  step,  to  the  post  of  duty,  though  their  path  is 
enfiladed  by  a  hundred  batteries.  But  keeping  the  idea 
of  bodily  pain  forever  present  to  a  child's  mind  counter- 
works this  result.  Indeed,  a  child  who  is  whipped  much 


344  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

will  inevitably  be  driven  into  one  or  the  other  of  two 
ruinous  extremes.  Which  of  the  extremes  it  shall  be,  will 
depend  upon  the  feebleness  or  the  vigor  of  his  natural 
disposition.  If  constitutionally  of  a  timid  and  irresolute 
character,  then  frequent  correction  will  excite  his  cau- 
tiousness to  such  a  morbid  activity  that  his  check  will 
blanch  and  his  heart  quail  at  the  slightest  menace  of  real 
dangers,  or  the  imagination  of  unreal  ones ;  and  he  will 
go  through  life  trembling  with  causeless  apprehensions, 
and  incapable  of  recovering  from  one  shudder  of  fear 
before  he  will  be  seized  by  another ;  —  incapable  of  all 
manly  resolution  and  heroism.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
child  has  an  energetic  will,  the  very  vehemence  of  which 
prompts  to  disobedience  and  waywardness,  then  frequency 
of  chastisement  will  exasperate  his  nature,  and  make  him 
recklessly  bold  and  fool-hardy.  It  will  make  him  despise 
the  gentleness  that  belongs  to  a  noble  spirit,  and  mistake 
ferocity  for  courage.  Now,  what  requital  can  any  teach- 
er make,  which  shall  be  an  adequate  compensation  to  a 
child  for  causing  his  dispositions  to  grow  into  a  deformity 
which  shall  be  a  torment  and  a  disgrace  to  him  while  life 
lasts  ?  Have  you  never  seen  an  aged  tree  whose  trunk 
still  bore  the  mark  where  some  heedless  man  had  struck 
his  axe  while  it  was  yet  young,  and  have  you  not  observed 
that,  on  the  wounded  side  of  the  tree,  the  foliage  was 
sickly  and  the  branches  scraggy  and  misshapen,  while  a 
superabundance  of  nutriment  sent. up  on  the  other  side 
had  made  the  limbs  shoot  out  into  huge  disproportions? 
Such  wounds  are  inflicted  by  unnecessary  punishment, 
upon  the  whole  moral  nature  of  a  child. 

But  there  is  another  consideration,  of  still  more  serious 
import.  A  teacher's  duty  is  by  no  means  restricted  to  the 
mere  communication  of  knowledge.  He  is  to  superin- 
tend the  growth  of  his  pupils'  minds.  These  minds  con- 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  345 

sist  of  various  powers  and  faculties,  by  which  they  are 
adapted  to  the  various  necessities,  relations  and  duties  of 
life.  Some  of  them  were  given  us  for  self-preservation. 
The  object  of  these  is,  ourselves,  —  our  own  existence, 
our  own  sustenance,  our  own  exemption  from  pain,  and 
protection  against  danger  and  loss  ;  —  in  fine,  our  per- 
sonal well-being.  Other  powers  are  domestic  and  social 
in  their  nature,  —  such  as  the  reciprocal  love  of  parents 
and  children ;  the  celestial  zone  of  affection  that  binds 
brothers  and  sisters  into  one ;  and  our  attachment  to 
friends,  which,  under  proper  cultivation,  enlarges  into 
fraternal  affection  for  the  race.  We  also  have  moral  and 
religious  sentiments,  which  may  be  exalted  into  a  solemn 
feeling  of  duty  towards  man  and  towards  God.  Now,  it 
is  a  most  responsible  part  of  the  teacher's  duty  to  super- 
intend the  growth  of  these  manifold  powers,  and  to  de- 
velop them  symmetrically  and  harmoniously  ;  to  repress 
some,  to  cherish  others,  and  to  fashion  the  whole  into 
beauty  and  loveliness  as  they  grow.  A  child  should  be 
saved  from  being  so  selfish  as  to  disregard  the  rights  of 
others,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  from  being  a  spendthrift  of 
his  own.  He  should  be  saved  from  being  so  proud  as  to 
disdain  the  world,  or  so  vain  as  to  go  through  the  world 
beseeching  everybody  to  praise  and  flatter  him.  He 
should  be  guarded  alike  against  being  so  devoted  to  his 
own  family  as  to  be  deaf  and  dead  to  all  social  claims  ; 
and  against  being  so  quixotically  social  as  to  run  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth,  to  bestow  the  bounty,  for  which  his 
own  family  and  neighborhood  are  suffering.  In  fine,  the 
teacher,  as  far  as  possible,  is  so  to  educate  the  child,  that 
when  he  becomes  a  man,  all  his  various  faculties  shall 
have  a  relative  and  proportionate  activity  and  vigor,  in- 
stead of  his  being  nervously  excitable  on  one  side  of  his 
nature,  and  palsy-stricken  on  the  other.  This  task  is  most 


346  SCHOOL    PUNISHMENTS. 

difficult,  and  it  requires  that  all  the  lights  possible  should 
shine  upon  the  work.  -'It  is  very  easy  to  point  out  de- 
formities of  character,  as  they  exhibit  themselves  glar- 
ingly and  hideously  in  manhood  ;  but  it  requires  great 
perspicacity  to  detect  the  early  tendencies  to  deformity, 
and  the  utmost  delicacy  and  felicity  of  touch  to  correct 
them.  If  a  full-grown  tree  is  ugly  or  misshapen,  any- 
body can  see  it,  but  it  is  only  the  skilful  cultivator  who 
can  foretell  and  forestall  its  irregular  tendencies  while  it 
is  yet  young.  It  is  this  duty  which  makes  the  office  of  a 
teacher  a  sacred  office.  The  teaching  of  A,  B,  C,  and  the 
multiplication-table,  has  no  quality  of  sacredness  in  it ; 
but  if  there  is  a  sacred  service,  a  holy  ministry  upon 
earth,  it  is  that  of  setting  a  just  bound  to  the  animal  ap- 
petites and  sensual  propensities  of  our  nature,  and  quick- 
ening into  life,  and  fostering  into  strength,  all  benevolent 
and  devout  affections  ;  for  it  is  by  the  relative  proportions 
between  these  parts  of  its  nature,  that  the  child  becomes 
angel-like  or  fiend-like.  Now,  that  the  teacher  may 
cherish  what  grows  too  slow,  and  check  what  grows  too 
fast,  it  is  indispensable  that  he  should  become  acquainted 
with  the  inmost  character  and  tendencies  of  his  pupil. 
The  pupil's  whole  mind  and  heart  should  be  spread  out, 
like  a  map,  before  the  teacher  for  his  inspection.  The 
teacher  should  be  able  to  examine  this  map,  to  survey  ii 
on  all  sides  and  at  anytime,  —  as  you  see  a  connois- 
seur walk  round  a  beautiful  statue  or  edifice,  that  he 
may  commit  all  its  proportions  to  memory.  And  here 
comes  the  evil  I  refer  to.  The  moment  a  child's  mind  is 
strongly  affected  by  fear,  it  flies  instinctively  away  and 
hides  itself  in  the  deepest  recesses  it  can  find,  —  often  in 
the  recesses  of  disingenuousness  and  perfidy  and  false- 
hood. Instead  of  exhibiting  to  you  his  whole  conscious- 
ness, he  conceals  from  you  as  much  of  it  as  he  can ;  or 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  347 

he  deceptively  presents  to  you  some  counterfeit  of  it,  in- 
stead of  the  genuine.  No  frighted  water-fowl,  whose 
plumage  the  bullet  of  the  sportsman  has  just  grazed, 
dives  quicker  beneath  the  surface,  than  a  child's  spirit 
darts  from  your  eye  when  you  have  filled  it  with  the  sen- 
timent of  fear.  And  your  communication  with  that 
child's  heart  is  at  an  end  ;  —  on  whatever  side  you  ap- 
proach him,  he  watches  you  and  flies,  and  keeps  an  im- 
passable distance  between  you  and  himself,  until  friendly 
relations  are  re-established  between  you.  His  body  may 
be  before  you,  but  not  his  soul ;  or,  if  his  soul  ventures  to 
peep  from  its  hiding-place,  it  is  only  in  some  masquerade 
dress  of  deception,  which  he  supposes  may  avert  your 
anger.  So  long  as  this  relation  continues,  whatever  you 
do  to  him,  you  do  in  the  dark.  As  he  has  ceased  to  show 
you  what  he  is,  you  cannot  know  what  he  needs,  and 
what  will  best  befit  his  condition.  When  was  there  ever 
painter  or  sculptor  so  skilful,  that  he  could  paint  or  chisel 
without  seeing  the  canvas  or  the  marble  on  which  he 
wrought  ?  And  when  was  ever  a  teacher  so  omniscient, 
that  he  could  cultivate  habits  and  character  aright,  unless 
he  was  admitted  from  day  to  day  to  see  those  thoughts 
and  emotions  of  the  child,  whose  long  indulgence  will 
result  in  the  habits  and  character  of  the  man  ? 

A  child  should  always  be  encouraged  to  make  known 
all  his  doubts  and  difficulties,  both  of  an  intellectual  and 
of  a  moral  character ;  and,  if  won  to  you  by  confidence 
instead  of  being  banished  from  you  by  fear,  he  will  gen- 
erally do  so.  If  a  learner  does  not  state  his  doubt  or 
difficulty  at  the  time  he  feels  it,  the  season  will  pass  by, 
perhaps  never  to  return.  And  certainly  no  other  time 
can  be  so  favorable  for  acquiring  correct  information,  or 
for  solving  a  doubt,  as  the  time  when  the  desire  or  the 
doubt  arises  in  the  mind.  Yet,  if  a  pupil  fears  even 


348  SCHOOL  PUNISHMENTS. 

a  rebuke  or  a  frown,  he  will  allow  the  proper  occasions 
to  pass  by,  at  the  hazard  of  remaining  ignorant  forever. 

Are  not  these  considerations  sufficient  to  show  that 
punishment,  —  I  mean  more  particularly,  corporal  pun- 
ishment,—  and  the  fear  which  punishment  proposes,  con- 
stitute a  great  evil  ?  Yet  great  as  the  evil  is,  I  admit 
that  it  is  less  than  the  evil  of  insubordination  or  disobe- 
dience. It  is  better,  therefore,  to  tolerate  punishment,  in 
cases  where  the  teacher  has  no  other  resource,  than  to 
suffer  insubordination  or  disobedience  in  our  schools. 
Yet  how  infinitely  better,  to  secure  order  and  proficiency, 
by  the  power  of  conscience  and  the  love  of  knowledge ;  — 
to  supersede  the  necessity  of  violence  by  moral  means. 
This  is  already  done  in  a  considerable  number  of  schools ; 
I  trust  it  is  done,  with  regard  to  some  scholars,  in  every 
school ;  —  that  is,  I  trust  there  are  at  least  some  scholars 
in  every  school  in  the  Commonwealth  who  never  know 
the  degradation  of  the  lash.  I  trust  there  is  no  teacher, 
with  such  a  vacuum  of  good  qualities  and  such  a  plenum 
of  bad  ones,  as  to  create  the  necessity  for  indiscriminate 
and  universal  flogging.  What,  then,  ought  teachers  to 
do  ?  I  answer,  they  should  aim  to  reach  those  higher 
and  higher  points  of  qualification,  which  shall  enable  them 
to  dispense  more  and  more  with  the  necessity  of  punish- 
ment. If  there  is  any  teacher  so  low  in  the  scale  of  fit- 
ness or  competency  as  to  feel  obliged  to  punish  every 
day,  he  should  strive  to  prolong  the  interval  to  once  a 
week.  If  any  teacher  punishes  but  once  a  quarter,  he 
should  strive  to  punish  but  once  a  year.  If  any  one  dis- 
graces himself  and  human  nature  by  punishing  fifty  per 
cent  of  his  pupils,  he  should  either  leave  the  school,  or 
make  a  most  liberal  discount  from  such  an  intolerable 
percentage.  If  any  one  punishes  ten  per  cent  of  his 
pupils,  he  should  strive  to  reduce  the  number  to  five,  to 


SCHOOL    PUNISHMENTS.  340 

three,  to  one  per  cent,  —  and  then,  if  possible,  to  none 
at  all.  If  there  are  five  per  cent  of  our  teachers  who 
now  keep  school  without  punishment,  this  number  should 
be  increased,  as  fast  as  possible,  to  ten  per  cent,  to  thirty, 
to  sixty,  to  ninety  per  cent.*  That  the  necessity  of  pun- 
ishment, so  vehemently  urged  by  some  teachers,  —  and 
which  is  urged  most  vehemently  by  those  who  punish 
most,  —  is  found,  when  analyzed,  to  be  a  necessity  that 
arises  from  a  want  of  competency,  or  fitness,  in  the 
teacher  himself,  rather  than  from  any  perversity  or  un- 
governableness  in  the  scholars,  is  demonstrable  from  this 
fact ;  —  that  certain  teachers  find  it  necessary  to  punish 
their  pupils  abundantly,  but,  on  leaving  the  schools,  and 
being  succeeded  by  competent  persons,  the  necessity  of 
punishment  vanishes,  —  the  same  schools  being  governed 
without  it.  Instances  have  occurred  where  a  teacher 
who  could  not  govern  without  punishment,  has  been  fol- 
lowed, through  successive  schools,  by  one  who  could, — 
thus  proving  that  the  alleged  necessity  of  punishment  be- 
longed to  the  teacher  and  not  to  the  schools.  Many  a 
teacher  has  been  turned  out  of  school,  because  he  could 
not  govern  without  punishment,  nor  even  with  it ;  and 
has  been  succeeded,  the  next  week,  by  one  who  found  no 
occasion  to  use  it, —  thus  affording  demonstrative  evi- 
dence, that  the  necessity  of  punishment,  in  those  cases, 
was  not  in  human  nature,  but  only  in  the  nature  of  Mr. 
A.  B.  Such  is  the  result  to  be  aimed  at,  longed  for, 

*  There  are  now  (1845)  at  least  ten  to  one  of  our  teachers,  as  compared 
with  the  number  in  1839  (when  this  lecture  was  written),  who  keep  school 
without  corporal  punishment.  And  in  ninety-nine  towns  in  every  hundred, 
in  the  State,  the  flogging  of  girls,  even  where  it  exists  at  all,  is  an  excecdingly 
rare  event.  Since  1837,  the  number  of  schools  in  the  State,  annually  broken 
up  through  the  incompetency  of  the  teachers,  or  the  insubordination  of  the 
scholars,  has  been  reduced  from  between  three  and  four  hundred,  to  about 
fifty. 


350  SCHOOL  PUNISHMENTS. 

toiled  for,  by  all.  In  the  mean  time,  I  blame  no  teacher 
for  occasional  punishment,  nor  even  for  occasional  corpo- 
ral punishment.  But  what  seems  to  me  utterly  unjusti- 
fiable, is,  the  defence  of  punishment,  as  though  it  were 
a  good  ;  or  the  palliation  of  it,  as  though  it  were  not  a 
great  evil.  What  seems  to  me  worthy  of  condemnation, 
is,  a  resort  to  punishment,  because  it  may  seem  to  be  a 
more  summary  and  convenient  method  of  securing  obedi- 
ence and  diligence  than  such  a  preparation  for  lessons  ou 
the  part  of  the  teacher,  as  would  make  them  attractive 
to  the  pupil ;  and  such  exhibitions  of  kindness  and  inter- 
est, as  would  win  the  affection  of  a  child,  and  make  him 
a  grateful  co-operator,  instead  of  a  toiling  slave.  An 
hour  spent  daily,  by  the  teacher,  in  the  preparation  of 
lessons,  an  anecdote,  a  narrative,  an  illustrative  picture, 
would  be  a  far  more  powerful  awakener  of  dormant  or 
sluggish  minds,  than  the  rod.  A  private  interview  with 
a  neglectful  or  disorderly  pupil,  a  visit  to  his  family,  some 
little  attention  or  gratuity  bestowed  upon  him,  —  any 
mode,  in  fine,  of  evincing  a  genuine  interest  in  his  wel- 
fare, —  would  oftentimes  accomplish  what  it  is  not  in  the 
power  of  blows  to  do.  "  By  mercy  and  truth,  iniquity  is 
purged,"  says  Solomon ;  "and  by  the  fear  of  the  Lord," 
—  not  by  the  fear  of  man,  —  "men  depart  from  evil." 

As  the  profession  of  teaching  rises  in  the  estimation  of 
the  public,  and  as  teachers  improve  in  their  capacities  and 
disposition  to  fulfil  the  sacred  duties  of  their  office,  may 
we  not  hope  for  a  gradual  change  in  our  schools,  in  this 
respect,  equally  auspicious  to  them  and  to  society  ?  And 
may  we  not  expect  that  those  teachers  who  enjoy  the 
most  of  social  consideration  and  of  emolument  will  take 
the  lead  in  diffusing  a  higher  spirit  and  in  setting  a  nobler 
example  ? 

Allow  me  here  to  say  a  word  respecting  a  notion  which 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  351 

I  sometimes  hear  advocated,  but  which  seems  to  me  un- 
tenable. As  an  argument  against  corporal  punishment, 
it  is  sometimes  urged,  that  it  makes  the  body  a  vicarious 
and  involuntary  sufferer  for  the  offences  of  the  mind.  It 
is  the  mind,  say  these  metaphysicians,  which  wills,  which 
offends  ;  and  to  punish  the  body  for  the  offences  of  the 
mind,  is  as  unjust  as  to  punish  John  for  the  sins  of  Peter. 
But,  if  it  is  the  mind  which  offends,  in  the  guilty  act,  is  it 
not  also  the  mind  which  suffers,  in  the  consequent  penal- 
ty ?  Take  away  the  mind,  —  that  is,  leave  the  body  a 
corpse,  and  would  its  dead  members  then  suffer  ?  I  con- 
fess, I  cannot  fathom  the  philosophy  of  this  objection. 
There  is,  however,  one  way  in  which  it  can  be  answered, 
even  on  the  principles  which  it  assumes.  If  body  and 
mind  are  to  be  considered  as  two,  so  as  to  exempt  the 
former  from  suffering  for  the  offences  of  the  latter ;  — 
even  then,  though  the  mind  may  be  the  original  offender, 
yet  the  body  becomes  a  particeps  criminis,  —  a  partaker 
in  the  crime,  —  by  consenting  to  carry  the  criminal  pur- 
pose of  the  mind  into  execution  ;  and  it  may  therefore 
be  lawfully  punished  as  an  accessory  after  the  fact. 

As  to  modes  of  punishment,  not  much  needs  be  said,  for 
the  savageness  of  torture  formerly  practised  in  our  schools 
is  now  nearly  discontinued,  though  it  is  still  retained  to  a 
frightful  extent  in  many  families.  When  I  was  at  the 
bar,  I  knew  a  father,  who  was  a  blacksmith  by  trade,  and 
who  used  to  punish  his  son  by  confining  him  in  the  cellar 
and  carrying  do\vn  heated  nail-rods  with  which  to  punch 
and  goad  him.  Before  the  boy  was  fifteen  years  old,  he  was 
tried  for  a  capital  offence.  I  was  assigned  by  the  court 
as  his  counsel.  He  was  convicted  and  sentenced  to  death, 
though  the  penalty  was  commuted  to  imprisonment,  in 
the  state-prison,  for  life.  Such  a  fate  was  the  natural 
result  of  such  an  education.  If  one  or  the  other  must 


352  SCHOOL    PUNISHMENTS. 

have  gone  to  the  gallows,  who  can  doubt  that  it  should 
have  been  the  father,  and  not  the  son  ?  When  an  angry 
man  chastises  a  child,  it  is  not  punishment ;  it  is  down- 
right fighting,  and  so  much  the  more  criminal  and  dis- 
graceful, as  the  person  assailed  is  a  child,  and  not  a 
man. 

Blows  should  never  be  inflicted  on  the  head.  We 
observe,  every  day,  how  thin  the  skull  of  an  infant  is. 
We  can  see  the  pulse  beat,  on  the  top  of  its  head.  The 
cranium  does  not  ordinarily  become  fixed  in  its  shape, 
until  the  age  of  twenty-five  years,  —  sometimes,  not  until 
a  much  later  period  of  life.  Dr.  Griscom,  in  his  excellent 
work,  entitled  "  Animal  Mechanism,"  says,  "  a  vibration 
of  the  skull,  by  communicating  a  corresponding  motion 
to  the  brain,  is  more  dangerous  ofttimes  than  an  instru- 
ment forced  through  the  bones  and  piercing  the  sub- 
stance of  the  brain."  And  again;  "Concussion  of  the 
brain  is  generally  more  productive  of  immediate  serious 
results,  than  a  puncture  of  its  substance.  It  is  well 
known,  in  fact,  that  a  considerable  portion  of  it  [the 
brain]  may  be  removed  or  destroyed,  without  proving 
fatal,  or  even  injuring  the  mental  faculties ;  but  a  sud- 
den jar  of  its  whole  substance  will  almost  certainly  de- 
prive the  individual  of  all  sense  and  consciousness,  and, 
if  not  speedily  recovered  from,  must  terminate  in  death." 
This  form  of  punishment,  too,  is  as  foolish  as  it  is  danger- 
ous. To  thwack  a  child  over  the  head  because  he  does 
not  get  his  lesson,  is  about  as  wise  as  it  would  be  to  rap 
a  watch  with  a  hammer  because  it  does  not  keep  good 
time.  No  one,  could  he  but  see  the  delicate  texture  of 
the  brain,  —  that  organ  where  the  Deity  has  brought  the 
material  and  the  immaterial,  the  earthly  and  the  immor- 
tal substances  together,  making  each  atom  of  the  former 
so  nice,  so  ethereal,  so  divinely-fashioned,  and  suspending 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  353 

all,  as  it  were,  particle  by  particle,  in  the  "  Dome  o. 
Thought,"  so  that  they  might  leap,  with  lightning  quick- 
ness, at  the  command  of  the  all-pervading  yet  invisible 
soul ;  —  no  one,  I  say,  who  has  ever  seen  this,  if  he  be 
not  a  madman  or  a  fool,  will  ever  again  strike  a  child 
upon  the  head  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  intellects  of 
thousands  of  children  have  been  impaired  for  life,  by  the 
blows  which  some  angry  parent  or  teacher  has  inflicted 
upon  the  head.  Nature,  foreseeing  that  the  brain  would 
be  exposed  to  accidents,  secured  it,  on  all  sides,  by  the 
hard  bones  of  the  cranium  ;  and,  to  conceal  any  rugged- 
ness  in  the  solid  masonry,  she  caused  a  silky  vegetation  to 
spring  up  from  and  adorn  it.  Had  she  foreseen  how 
brutally  it  would  be  assaulted  by  men,  would  she  not 
rather  have  encircled  it  with  a  spherical  iron-fender,  or 
made  it  bristle,  all  over,  with  porcupine's  quills,  to  give 
it  a  defence  instead  of  an  ornament  ?  Even  in  the  British 
army  and  navy,  where  whipping  has  been,  for  frequency, 
like  their  daily  bread,  certain  parts  of  the  frame,  such  as 
the  head  and  loins,  have  been  held  sacred  from  the  in- 
struments of  torture. 

Neither  should  a  child  ever  be  subjected  to  any  violent 
motion  or  concussion,  such  as  seizing  him  by  the  arm, 
holding  him  out  at  arm's-length,  and  shaking  him,  —  the 
whole  weight  of  the  body  being  suspended  by  a  single 
ligament,  and  the  strain  upon  that  being  greatly  increased 
by  the  jerking.  Most  of  us  have  experienced  the  shock 
which  even  a  slight  fall  may  give  to  the  system.  When, 
in  descending  a  flight  of  steps,  we  mistakingly  suppose 
we  have  reached  the  bottom,  and  so  step  forward  upon 
the  air,  instead  of  the  floor,  the  jar  to  the  whole  body  is 
always  uncomfortable,  and  sometimes  serious  ;  but  how 
much  more  severe  must  be  the  effect  upon  the  feebly- 
knitted  frame  of  a  child,  when  a  strong  man  seizes  him, 

VOL.  I.  23 


354  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

and  jerks  him  forwards  and  backwards,  as  a  coachman 
cracks  a  whip  ;  and  then  dashes  him  upon  the  floor,  feet 
foremost,  shortening  his  dimensions,  as  one  shuts  up  a 
telescope  ;  and  coils  him  and  uncoils  him,  and  crimps  him 
and  stretches  him  smooth  again  !  I  have  seen  a  man 
seize  two  boys,  at  a  time,  in  school,  for  some  joint  mis- 
demeanor, and,  holding  them  by  the  back  of  the  coat- 
collar,  make  them  "  chassee  "  right  and  left,  then  "for- 
ward and  back  two"  and,  at  last,  bring  them  together 
with  a  terrific  "dos-d-dos"  until  his  own  strength  or  the 
tailor's  stitching  gave  way  ;  and  do  it  all  with  as  much 
zest  as  though  it  were  an  exercise  in  gymnastics. 

Corporal  punishment  should  be  with  a  rod,  rather  than 
with  a  ferrule,  and  below  the  loins  or  upon  the  legs, 
rather  than  upon  the  body  or  hand. 

In  regard  to  the  extent  or  severity  of  punishment,  it  is 
obvious  that  it  must  be  a  reality,  and  not  a  sham.  If 
the  lightning  never  struck,  nobody  would  be  afraid  of  the 
thunder.  Yet  the  opposite  extreme  is  to  be  sedulously 
guarded  against.  In  all  schools  that  are  rightly  gov- 
erned, it  is  the  mortification  of  being  punished,  quite  as 
much  as  the  bodily  smart  or  tingling,  which  causes  it  to 
be  deprecated,  and  gives  it  efficacy.  If  the  common 
standard  or  average  of  punishment  is  fixed  low,  whatever 
exceeds  that  amount  will  be  equally  as  formidable  as 
though  the  average  were  higher.  Besides,  if  the  penalty 
for  moderate  offences  be  very  severe,  what  shall  be  done 
in  aggravated  cases  ?  Where  stealing  a  shilling  is  pun- 
ishable with  death,  and  murder  with  nothing  more,  it  is, 
virtually,  offering  a  premium  on  murder.  The  most  dis- 
orderly school  I  ever  saw,  was  one  where  the  teacher  car- 
ried a  rattan  in  his  hand  all  the  time  ;  and  even  while  the 
company  was  present,  there  was  scarcely  any  thing  done, 
except  giving  a  practical  synopsis  of  the  verb  to  whip.  A 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  355 

universality  of  whipping  defeats  itself.  Where  all  share 
the  same  odious  fortune,  disgrace  attaches  to  none.  Like 
the  inhabitants  of  Botany  Bay,  all  being  rogues,  nobody 
loses  caste.  Shame  never  belongs  to  multitudes.  It  is 
the  separation  of  one  or  a  few  from  all  others,  and  affix- 
ing a  stigma  upon  them,  that  begets  shame. 

In  graduating  the  amount  of  punishment,  we  should 
regard  the  motive  from  which  the  offence  proceeded,  and 
not  the  consequences  which  may  have  been  produced  by 
it.  In  the  government  of  children,  people  are  prone  to 
look  at  the  outward,  external  consequences  of  the  wrong- 
ful act,  and  to  apportion  the  punishment  according  to 
the  mischief  done ;  —  for  a  small  mischief  punishing 
lightly,  for  a  serious  one,  severely.  This  is  a  false 
criterion.  An  act  merely  careless  may  set  a  house  on 
fire;  and  again,  an  attempt  to  burn  a  house  may  fail, 
through  the  merest  accident,  and  do  no  injury.  The  true 
rule,  in  meting  out  punishment,  is,  to  disregard  the  ex- 
ternal consequences,  to  look  to  the  intention  and  motive 
from  which  the  offence  emanated,  and  to  apportion  the 
penalty  to  the  wickedness  of  the  intent,  whether  it  took 
effect  or  failed.  It  is  the  condition  of  the  mind  that  is  to 
be  regarded.  If  that  is  wrong,  all  is  wrong ;  if  that  is 
right,  it  is  of  comparatively  little  consequence  what  out- 
ward effects  may  have  followed.  Teach  children,  that  to 
die  is  but  a  small  calamity ;  to  be  depraved,  a  great  one. 

One  word  more  as  to  the  extent  or  amount  of  punish- 
ment. Severe  punishments  are  usually  incurred  by  the 
violent  outbreak  of  some  passion  or  propensity.  A  child 
has  a  quarrelsome  disposition,  and  beats  a  schoolmate ; 
or  he  has  been  accustomed  to  place  all  pleasure  in  the  in- 
dulgence of  appetite,  and  steals  fruit  or  cakes  ;  or  he 
wishes  to  conceal  a  fault,  and  lies.  In  these  cases,  he 
acts  under  the  impulse  of  an  appetite  or  propensity,  and 


356  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

these  impulses  are  all  blind.  They  act  instinctively. 
Remove  the  temptation,  in  these  cases,  —  that  is,  let  the 
desired  object  be  attainable  without  the  commission  of 
the  offence,  —  and  the  offence  would  not  be  committed. 
The  offence  is  not  committed  for  its  own  sake,  but  for  the 
sake  of  the  gratification  or  immunity  to  be  purchased  by 
it.  Now,  I  have  no  doubt,  that  when  the  temptation  is 
not  present,  the  reason  and  conscience  of  most  children 
tell  them  plainly  enough  that  the  indulgence  is  wrong. 
When  the  passions  are  asleep,  reason  and  conscience 
affirm  their  own  authority,  declare  their  own  rights,  and 
place  themselves  in  an  attitude  of  defence.  But,  by  and 
by,  the  insurgent  passion  returns  and  demands  its  grati- 
fication ;  and  when  reason  and  conscience  place  them- 
selves in  its  pathjjt  rides  them  down,  as  heavy-armed 
cavalry  ride  over  unarmed  peasantry.  In  these  cases, 
reason  and  conscience  are  the  antagonists  of  passion  ; 
but  they  are  not  a  match  for  it,  and  are  trodden  down  by 
it.  Here,  if  all  other  means  fail,  punishment,  that  is, 
the  fear  of  punishment,  may  be  lawfully  called  in.  as  an 
ally  to  duty,  so  that  the  child's  first  thought  shall  be 
this  :  —  However  much  I  desire  such  or  such  a  pleasure, 
I  must  incur  so  much  pain  by  obtaining  it,  that,  on  the 
whole,  it  is  not  worth  what  it  will  cost.  Such  is  the  case 
in  ten  thousand  minds,  whether  of  children  or  of  men, 
—  Fear  fighting  Desire;  —  and  here  the  fear, —  that  is, 
the  amount  of  punishment  exciting  the  fear,  —  should 
be  strong  enough,  with  such  aid  as  reason  and  conscience 
may  contribute,  to  vanquish  the  desire.  This  affords  a 
rule  for  the  measure  of  punishment.  All  beyond  this 
is  wantonness  or  vindictiveness,  and  not  to  be  tolerated. 
To  illustrate  what  I  mean,  by  an  anecdote:  Just  as  a 
certain  school  was  closing,  one  afternoon,  a  boy  named 
John,  who  had  become  almost  crazy  with  impatience,  and 


SCHOOL    PUNISHMENTS.  357 

in  whom  the  steam  of  discontent  had  risen  almost  to  the 
exploding  point,  whistled  outright.  "John,"  said  the 
teacher,  "  was  it  you  who  whistled  ?  "  "  No,  sir,"  says 
John.  "  Henry,"  says  the  teacher,  "  didn't  John  whis- 
tle?" "Yes,  sir,"  says  Henry.  "John,"  says  the 
teacher,  "  how  dare  you  say  you  did  not  whistle  ?  "  "I 
didn't,"  says  John,  "  it  whistle d  itself.'"  Now,  in  this 
case,  if  John  were  to  be  punished  at  all,  he  should  only 
be  punished  so  much  that  it  would  not  whistle  itself,  the 
next  time. 

As  to  the  question,  under  what  circumstances  punish- 
ment should  be  inflicted,  I  think,  in  the  first  place,  it 
should,  in  ordinary  cases,  be  private,  —  at  recess,  or  in  an- 
other apartment,  or  after  the  close  of  the  school.  Punish- 
ment is  often  braved  by  audacious  natures,  and  its  effect 
lost  upon  them  by  its  publicity.  They  wish  to  sustain,  or 
to  win  a  reputation  for  hardiness  and  indomitableness  of 
spirit,  and  hence  they  will  bear  any  punishment,  if  pub- 
licly inflicted,  without  shrinking  or  flinching  ;  — just  as 
an  Indian  sings  when  he  is  tortured,  or  as  some  steel- 
fibred  malefactors  walk  unconcernedly  up  the  gallows' 
ladder,  as  though  they  were  going  up  stairs  to  bed.  So 
far  as  the  effect  upon  other  pupils  is  concerned,  it  is  ob- 
vious that  their  imaginations  will  be  likely  to  exaggerate 
an  unknown  punishment  beyond  the  reality,  unless,  in- 
deed, it  be  terribly  severe.  Under  actual  inspection, 
punishment  would  have  its  limits  of  suffering  ;  but  im- 
agination has  no  limits. 

Punishment  should  never  be  inflicted  without  deep  so- 
lemnity of  manner.  The  teacher  should  exhibit  every 
indication  that  he  suffers  more  pain  in  giving,  than  its 
object  does  in  receiving  it.  Because  grown  persons  arc 
out  of  the  way  of  punishment,  they  are  prone  to  think 
of  it  lightly,  to  speak  of  it  lightly,  and  to  inflict  it  lightly. 


358  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

But  it  is  a  solemn  dispensation,  and  should  be  treated 
with  corresponding  solemnity.  I  believe  a  finely-tempered 
child  suffers  as  much,  by  being  kept  from  his  playmates 
after  school,  to  be  punished,  as  a  high-spirited  man  would 
suffer,  in  being  taken  to  prison  from  family  and  friends. 
How  obvious  then  it  is,  that  punishment  should  never  be 
inflicted  in  a  passion,  —  unless,  indeed,  it  be  a  passion  of 
tears.  Angry  feelings  in  a  teacher  beget  angry  feelings 
in  a  pupil,  and  if  these  are  repeated,  day  after  day,  they 
will  at  last  rise  to  obstinacy,  to  obduracy  and  incorrigible- 
ness.  No  man  can  conceive  the  difference  which  must  be 
produced  in  the  future  character  and  happiness  of  chil- 
dren, and  eventually  upon  the  future  character  and  hap- 
piness of  the  whole  community,  if,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
early  years  of  life  are  filled  with'  dissocial,  morose  and 
revengeful  feelings,  or,  on  the  other,  with  sentiments  of 
tenderness  and  affection.  I  will  not  cite  the  case  of 
barbarous  tribes,  because  they  are  an  extreme ;  but 
whence  did  the  old  Romans  derive  their  inexorableness 
and  impenetrability  of  heart  ?  They  rose  to  the  highest 
state  of  ancient  civilization,  and  yet  their  national  em- 
ployment was  war ;  their  national  resources  were  plunder, 
and  their  national  glory  consisted  in  unrighteous  victo- 
ries, won  over  unoffending  nations.  Under  such  influ- 
ences, their  hearts  became  more  impenetrable  than  the 
iron  mail  that  covered  them.  In  their  religion,  Mars 
received  ten  times  more  homage  than  Jupiter.  They 
prayed  and  sacrificed  to  the  latter,  just  enough  to  retain 
his  good  will,  but  the  former  was  the  god  of  their  affec- 
tions. This  intense  destructiveness  in  the  national  char- 
acter was  cultivated  by  their  exhibitions  of  fighting  wild 
beasts,  and  their  gladiatorial  contests.  One  of  these 
spectacles  lasted  more  than  four  months  ;  eleven  thousand 
animals  of  different  kinds  were  killed,  and  ten  thousand 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  359 

gladiators  fought.  Think  of  a  people  who  could  give 
the  appellation  of  "Games"  to  these  blood-reeking  abom- 
inations. Every  person  who  manifests  cruelty  or  anger 
before  the  young,  does  all  he  can  to  fashion  their  un- 
formed tempers  into  this  revolting  and  unchristian  shape. 

Is  not  the  British  nation  celebrated,  the  world  over,  for 
the  aggressive  spirit  of  its  policy,  and,  with  many  beauti- 
ful exceptions,  for  the  unamiable  character  of  its  people ; 
and  is  it  not  in  the  schools  of  Great  Britain  that  punish- 
ments are  more  frequent  and  more  severe  than  in  any 
other  part  of  Christendom  ?  I  know  it  is  said  that  this  se- 
verity in  the  discipline  of  children  is  accompanied  by  great 
hardihood  of  spirit  and  by  distinguished  martial  bravery 
in  men.  Look  into  British  factories  and  British  mines, 
and  see  by  what  else  it  is  accompanied  ! 

Punishment  should  not  be  inflicted  in  haste,  nor  sum- 
marily. It  should  bear  every  mark  of  consideration,  and 
of  being  administered  from  the  moral  compulsion  of  duty. 
Its  effects  pervade  the  whole  moral  nature  of  a  child. 
By  its  application,  the  disease  may  not  be  cured,  but  only 
driven  in,  to  break  out  with  increased  violence  at  another 
time,  or  in  another  place.  The  times  when  a  punished 
child  is  dismissed  or  sent  back  to  his  seat  are  among  the 
most  decisive  epochs  in  his  moral  history.  Often,  they 
are  turning-points  in  the  journey  of  life,  where,  for  good, 
or  for  evil,  he  leaves  one  path  and  enters  upon  another  ; 
and  though,  at  first,  their  divergency  may  be  slight,  yet 
their  terminations  may  be  as  far  asunder  as  the  upper 
from  the  nether  world.  Hence  the  necessity  of  learning 
the  condition  of  his  feelings  at  those  times,  in  order  to 
rectify  whatever  may  be  wrong  in  them.  I  confess  that  I 
have  been  amazed  and  overwhelmed,  to  see  a  teacher 
spend  an  hour  at  the  black-board,  explaining  arithmeti- 
cal questions,  and  another  hour  on  the  reading  or  gram- 


360  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

mar  lessons ;  and,  in  the  mean  time,  as  though  it  were 
only  some  interlude,  seize  a  boy  by  the  collar,  drag  him 
to  the  floor,  castigate  him,  and  remand  him  to  his  seat,  — 
the  whole  process  not  occupying  two  minutes.  Such  la- 
borious processes  for  the  intellect,  such  summary  dealings 
with  the  heart ;  —  with  that  part  of  us,  where  all  motives 
reside,  whence  all  actions  proceed,  and  which  shall  grow 
in  loftiness,  until  we  become,  in  moral  stature,  taller  than 
archangels,  or  arch-fiends !  But,  says  the  teacher,  in  de- 
fence of  his  extempore  inflictions,  I  have  no  time  for  your 
homilies  and  moralizings.  I  should  come  short  of  my  daily 
round  of  tasks,  I  must  skip  or  clip  my  recitations,  did  1 
spend  time  to  inquire  whether  the  child  thought  himself 
wronged  or  justly  dealt  by  ;  whether  he  would  look  back- 
ward upon  the  occasion  with  repentance,  or  forward  with 
revenge  ;  whether  conscience  were  alive  or  dead  in  his 
breast.  But,  for  man's  sake  and  for  Heaven's  sake,  let 
rne  ask,  what  was  time  made  for,  if  not  for  these  moral 
uses  ? — To  what  holier  purpose  can  time  be  appropriated, 
than,  when  a  child  gets  lost  in  error,  to  set  his  face  to- 
wards the  right  point  of  the  moral  compass  before  he  is 
started  off  again?  The  glass  of  time  contains  no  sands 
more  sacred  than  those  which  run  during  these  precious 
moments.  When  I  look  back  to  the  playmates  of  my 
childhood ;  when  I  remember  the  acquaintance  which  I 
formed  with  nine  college  classes  ;  when  I  cast  my  eye 
over  the  circles  of  men  with  whom  professional  and  pub- 
lic duties  made  me  conversant ;  I  find  amongst  all  these 
examples,  that,  for  one  man  who  has  been  ruined  for 
want  of  intellect  or  attainment,  hundreds  have  perished 
for  want  of  morals.  And  yet,  with  this  disproportion  be- 
tween the  causes  of  human  ruin,  we  go  on,  bestowing  at 
least  a  hundred  times  more  care  and  pains  and  cost  in  the 
education  of  the  intellect,  than  in  the  cultivation  of  the 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  861 

moral  sentiments,  and  in  the  establishment  of  moral  prin- 
ciples. From  year  to  year,  we  pursue  the  same  course  of 
navigation,  with  all  these  treasure-laden  vessels  going 
down  to  destruction  around  us  and  before  us,  when,  if  the 
ocean  in  which  they  are  sunk  were  not  fathomless  and 
bottomless,  the  wrecks,  ere  this,  would  have  rilled  it  solid 
to  the  surface. 

Let  me  adjure  teachers  to  reconsider  this  whole  sub- 
ject ;  to  apportion  anew  the  appeals  to  the  physical  and 
to  the  moral  nature  of  children ;  and,  if  the  practice 
anywhere  still  exists  of  punishing  by  sections  or  rjlatoons, 
without  inquiry  and  without  counsel,  to  abolish  it,  instan- 
taneously and  forever. 

A  child  may  surrender  to  fear,  without  surrendering  to 
principle.  But  it  is  the  surrender  to  principle  only  which 
has  any  permanent  value.  The  surrender  of  a  child  to 
fear,  is  like  a  surrender  of  our  purse  to  a  highwayman, 
whom,  that  very  instant,  we  would  shoot  if  we  could. 
Hence,  after  the  outward  demonstrations  of  the  inward 
evil  have  been  repressed,  let  not  teacher  or  parent  think 
that  his  labor  is  done.  It  is  only  begun.  In  a  moral 
sense,  the  child  is  still  a  valetudinarian.  Often,  the  very 
process  which  quells  the  rage  of  the  disease,  weakens  the 
constitution  of  the  patient,  and  special  pains  become  so 
much  the  more  necessary  to  re-establish  health.  Let  the 
cordial  of  love  and  consolation  be  administered  to  the 
wounded  spirit.  This  is  often  the  most  delicate,  always 
the  most  important  part  of  the  process.  I  had  almos,t 
said,  better  die  of  the  disease  than  to  expel  it  by  remedies, 
which,  proving  fatal  to  the  constitution,  entail  a  daily 
torture  upon  all  subsequent  life.  The  external  manifesta- 
tion,—  the  overt  acts,  —  of  a  passion,  may  be  stifled, 
while  the  passion  itself  lives  on,  and  broods  over  its  viper- 
offspring  in  the  silent  breast.  Instead  of  a  solemn  re- 


362  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

solve  against  further  indulgence,  it  may  be  nursing  its 
strength  in  secrecy  for  a  postponed  gratification.  It  may 
have  withdrawn  from  outward  view,  but  be  lying  in  am- 
bush, and  watching  the  hour  when  it  can  securely  leap 
upon  its  victim.  Now,  no  fury  of  external  outbreak  is  so 
much  to  be  dreaded  and  deprecated  as  these  silent 
machinations,  or  foretastes  of  revenge.  It  is,  therefore, 
no  paradox  to  say,  that  order  and  silence  and  regularity 
may  be  maintained,  in  a  school,  by  a  course  of  discipline, 
which,  while  it  seems  to  make  a  good  school,  shall,  in 
reality,  be  a  skilfully  arranged  process  for  making  bad 
men.  The  feelings,  with  which  the  child  leaves  the  bar 
and  the  tribunal,  —  the  course  which  is  given  to  his 
future  feelings  by  the  executions  of  the  sentence;  —  this, 
as  it  regards  the  moral  welfare  of  the  child,  is  the  whole ; 
—  all  else  is  as  nothing,  compared  with  it.  His  moral 
nature  has  been  fused  in  the  fires  of  shame  and  pain,  and 
the  question  is,  in  what  shapes,  of  good  or  of  evil,  it  shall 
harden  as  it  cools.  Everybody  is  familiar  with  the  story 
of  Dr.  Bowditch,  who  came  near  to  being  inhumanly 
punished  for  an  alleged  falsehood,  because  he  said  he  had 
solved  an  arithmetical  question,  whose  solution  required 
more  talent  than  his  tyrannical  master  supposed  him  to 
possess.  Late  in  life,  that  great  man  spoke  of  the  event 
in  a  manner  which  showed  that,  after  the  lapse  of  half 
a  century,  the  feeling  of  righteous  indignation  towards 
the  teacher  was  still  vivid  in  his  breast.  How  often  do 
we  meet  men,  who  never  speak  of  some  former  teacher 
of  theirs,  without  a  contraction  of  the  whole  muscular 
system ;  —  without  such  involuntary  motions  as  would 
indicate  that  they  were  crushing  a  viper  in  their  hands, 
and  had  the  head  of  a  serpent  under  their  heel !  Punish- 
ment inflicted  by  such  teachers  may  have  prevented 
whispering  in  school,  but  at  the  expense  of  a  thousand 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  363 

muttered  curses  afterwards.  Those  whose  art  it  is  to 
color  cloths  have  a  time  and  a  process  for  what  they  call 
.letting  the  color.  The  hour  of  punishment  is  the  time, 
when,  perhaps  more  than  at  any  other  time,  the  com- 
plexion of  the  moral  character  is  set ;  —  and  oh !  how 
often  it  is  dyed  to  that  hue  of  immitigable  blackness, 
which  can  neither  be  purged  nor  washed  away  by  the 
refiner's  fire  or  the  fuller's  soap  ! 

If  angry  feelings  survive  punishment,  they  can  rarely 
be  concealed  from  a  discerning  eye.  They  will  be  be- 
trayed by  the  looks,  and,  especially,  by  the  tones  of  the 
voice.  The  child  will  not  have  the  same  freedom,  or  ease 
of  manner,  as  before,  nor  the  same  zest  for  accustomed 
pleasures.  His  eye  will  droop,  or  turn  away,  when  it 
meets  that  of  the  teacher,  or  else  it  will  be  fixed  upon 
him,  with  a  look  of  defiance.  Perhaps  he  will  be  even 
more  punctilious  in  the  discharge  of  duties,  as  one  of  the 
concealments  for  the  revenge  he  is  nourishing  within. 
But  that  subtlest  organ,  the  voice,  will  be  the  great  index. 
Any  of  these  indications  should  admonish  the  teacher 
that  the  realm  within  is  not  yet  wholly  at  peace,  and  that 
it  needs  another  visitation  from  the  spirit  of  duty  to  calm 
its  troubled  elements.  And  well  may  the  teacher  afford 
to  spend  time  and  strength  for  such  an  object ;  for,  if  he 
can  effect  a  thorough  reformation,  by  a  change  of  view  or 
by  the  inspiration  of  a  new  purpose,  it  will  probably  be  a 
reformation,  once  for  all,  —  a  repentance  not  to  be  re- 
pented of. 

In  the  management  of  children,  we  often  aggravate 
the  obstinacy  and  incorrigibleness  we  lament,  by  perpetu- 
ally rebuking  and  punishing  a  bad  tendency,  instead  of 
expending  the  same  amount  of  time  and  means  for 
inspiring  the  proper  countervailing  motives.  The  relative 
strength  of  any  one  faculty  is  as  certainly  reduced  by 


364  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

increasing  the  strength  of  its  antagonist  faculties,  as  by 
reducing  its  own.  Remove  by  introducing.  Nourish  the 
good  plant,  until  it  overshadows  the  bad  one,  and  inter- 
cepts its  sunshine  and  absorbs  its  nutriment.  One  of  the 
most  efficient  means  of  that  revolution  which  has  lately 
taken.placc,  in  the  cure  of  the  insane,  consists  in  the  sub- 
stitution of  new  trains  of  thoughts  and  feelings,  until 
the  former  ones  die  out.  While  the  old  physicians  strove 
to  expel  the  currents  of  insane  thought  and  emotion,  by 
scourgings,  and  drownings,  and  confinements  in  dun- 
geons, they  tried  and  tortured  in  vain.  They  only  aggra- 
vated the  maladies  they  were  appointed  to  heal.  But 
from  the  day  that  they  began  to  open  new  sources  of 
thought  and  feeling  in  the  minds  of  their  patients,  —  from 
that  day,  a  power  to  cast  out  the  evil  spirits  of  insanity 
was  given  them.  So,  in  the  training  of  a  child,  it  is 
possible  to  supplant  vicious  images  and  vicious  desires, 
by  substituting  virtuous  images  and  virtuous  desires ;  but 
it  is  not  possible  to  create  a  void  by  merely  removing  the 
vicious  ones. 

Another  rule  is  to  be  observed  in  administering  all  re- 
bukes and  all  punishments.  Always  connect  the  rebuke 
or  the  punishment  with  the  wrong  that  incurs  it,  and  not 
with  the  correlative  right.  Keep  the  idea  of  the  offence 
before  the  child's  mind,  as  the  cause  of  his  suffering.  If 
you  correct  a  boy  for  not  coming  to  school  half  an  hour 
earlier,  he  wishes  the  school  was  in  the  Red  Sea,  because,  by 
the  law  of  mental  association,  the  punishment  is  involun- 
tarily connected  with  the  school.  But  correct  him  for 
truancy,  in  stopping  to  play  at  marbles,  and  the  next  time 
he  is  tempted  to  stop  and  play,  the  very  sight  of  the 
marbles,  by  the  law  of  association,  will  make  his  skin  itcli 
and  tingle.  If  a  boy  is  convicted  of  falsehood,  and  the 
teacher,  as  he  lays  on  the  smart,  says,  "  I'll  teach  you 


SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS.  365 

how  to  speak  the  truth,"  the  boy  will  hate  the  very  idea" 
of  truth,  for  the  bad  company  it  comes  in.  But  if  the 
teacher,  in  administering  the  penalty,  explains  that  false- 
hood and  punishment  are  Siamese  twins,  and  must  go  to- 
gether, then,  when  falsehood  comes  smiling  and  bland- 
ishing along  to  tempt  its  victim  again,  he  will  see  the 
terrific  form  of  pain  standing  by  its  side.  Thus  the  as- 
sociation of  pain  should  always  be  connected  with  the 
wrong  done,  and  never  with  the  duty  omitted.  It  thus 
becomes  unconsciously  an  auxiliary  for  the  right.  So, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  rewards  of  virtue  should  be  always 
associated  with  the  virtuous  conduct,  as  though  the 
former  grew  naturally  from  the  latter.  Every  person,  at 
all  conversant  with  the  forum  or  the  senate,  knows  that 
one  of  the  great  secrets  of  an  orator's  power  consists  in 
his  skilful  management  of  the  involuntary  associations. 
If  this  is  an  efficient  instrument  in  swaying  the  minds  of 
men,  how  much  more  so  in  controlling  children ! 

I  cannot  close  these  remarks,  without  saying  a  word 
upon  the  general  duty  of  parents  whose  children  are 
punished  at  school.  That  duty  is  to  espouse  the  side  of 
the  teacher,  to  vindicate  his  conduct,  and,  especially,  to 
abstain  from  all  complaint  against  him  in  any  place  where 
it  may  come  to  the  child's  ear.  They  should  have  an  in- 
terview with  the  child  himself  on  the  subject ;  they  should 
explain  the  nature  of  the  misconduct  that  incurred  the 
punishment,  and  they  should  show  them  that  they,  the 
parents,  suffer  shame  and  mortification,  on  his  account, 
sharper  than  any  pain  of  chastisement  can  be.  They 
should  strive  to  close  any  breach  of  alienation  between 
pupil  and  teacher,  which  the  punishment  may  have 
caused.  If  the  parent  has  reason  to  suppose  that  the 
punishment  was  too  severe,  or  that  the  mode  or  spirit  of 
inflicting  it  was  improper,  let  him  seek  a  private  interview 


366  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

with  the  teacher,  frankly  state  his  apprehensions,  and 
then,  like  an  honest  and  impartial  man,  hearken  to  the 
defence  that  may  be  made.  The  punishment  of  children 
at  school  furnishes  the  very  occasions  when  that  love  of 
offspring,  which  Heaven,  for  the  wisest  purposes,  has 
planted  in  every  parental  breast,  is  liable  to  become  inju- 
rious and  excessive ;  and  when,  therefore,  it  most  needs 
the  control  of  reason.  Only  in  cases  made  flagrant  by 
their  excess,  or  their  frequency,  should  the  conduct  of 
the  teacher  receive  public  animadversion. 

I  knew  a  family,  in  which  there  were  five  children,  who 
received  almost  all  the  education  they  ever  had,  in  the 
district  school  of  an  obscure  country  town.  It  was  the 
father's  custom,  during  the  first  week  of  the  winter's 
school,  to  invite  the  master  to  dine  with  him  ;  and  when 
the  whole  family  were  gathered  around  the  table,  to  make 
the  importance  of  the  school,  the  necessity  of  good  order, 
and  obedience  in  it,  with  other  kindred  topics,  the  subject 
of  conversation ;  and  then,  in  the  presence  of  the  chil- 
dren, to  say,  as  it  were  incidentally,  that  he  trusted  they- 
would  all  behave  well ;  that  they  knew  no  desire  was  so 
near  his  heart  as  their  welfare  ;  but  that,  if  they  justly 
incurred  any  punishment  at  school,  he  should  repeat  it  at 
home,  because  he  should  consider  an  offence  committed 
in  school  as  an  offence  against  himself,  as  well  as  against 
the  teacher.  One  of  the  sons,  —  a  boy  of  such  high, 
sanguineous  temperament  that  his  feelings  were  subject  to 
a  sort  of  spontaneous  combustion,  —  one  day  drew  down 
punishment  upon  himself  for  a  practical  joke,  —  which, 
if  the  wit  of  it  had  been  an  atonement,  instead  of  an 
aggravation,  would  have  been  expiated  in  the  commis- 
sion ;  —  and  the  fact  being  known  at  home,  by  the  very 
solemnity  of  the  children's  looks,  the  father  inquired  into 
the  circumstances,  and,  finding  the  punishment  to  have 


SCHOOL    PUNISHMENTS.  367 

been  well  merited,  that  very  night  he  laid  upon  the  boy's 
back  what  the  learned  would  call  a  fac-simile,  or  dupli- 
cate original,  of  the  stripes  ;  and  there  ended  the  chapter 
of  school  punishments,  in  that  family,  forever.  Not 
another  child,  ever  afterwards,  got  sting  or  tingle  at 
school ;  and  this,  happening  in  the  old-fashioned  times, 
when  the  mischievous  system  of  emulation  bore  sway,  the 
children  of  that  family,  year  after  year,  swept  away  all  the 
prizes,  and  nobody  ever  thought  of  asking  who  were  at 
the  heads  of  the  classes. 

I  would  conclude  with  this  summary  of  what  has  been 
said  :  —  that,  in  the  present  state  of  society,  and  with  our 
present  inexperienced  and  untrained  corps  of  teachers, 
punishment,  and  even  corporal  punishment,  cannot  be 
dispensed  with,  by  all  teachers,  in  all  schools,  and  with 
regard  to  all  scholars ;  that,  where  a  school  is  well  con- 
ducted, the  minimum  of  punishment  shows  the  maximum 
of  qualifications  ;  that  the  office  of  punishment  is  solely 
to  restrain  transgressors,  until  other  and  higher  motives 
can  be  brought  to  bear  upon  them,  and,  therefore,  that 
the  great  and  paramount  duty  of  the  teacher,  in  all  cases, 
is  to  regard,  as  all-essential,  the  state  of  mind  into  which 
a  child  is  brought  by  the  punishment,  and  in  which  he  is 
left  after  it,  —  the  current  of  thought  and  feeling  intro- 
duced being  in  every  respect  as  important  as  that  which 
is  turned  away  ;  that,  as  the  object  of  school  is  to  prepare 
for  the  duties  of  after-life,  it  follows  that  the  school  is 
made  for  the  world,  arid  not  the  world  for  the  school ; 
and  hence,  however  much  any  course  may  seem  to  pro- 
mote the  present  good  appearance  or  intellectual  advance- 
ment of  the  school,  yet,  if  it  tends  to  defeat  the  welfare 
of  the  future  men  and  women,  now  composing  the  school, 
its  adoption  is  shortsighted  and  suicidal ;  and  finally,  that 
punishment  of  no  kind  is  ever  inflicted  in  the  right  spirit, 


368  SCHOOL   PUNISHMENTS. 

or  is  likely  to  be  inflicted  in  the  right  measure,  or  with 
the  right  results,  unless  it  is  as  painful  to  him  who  im- 
poses as  to  him  who  receives  it.  Let  these  truths  be  re- 
garded, and  Christian  teachers  and  parents,  in  the  few 
cases  in  which  they  will  be  called  upon  to  administer 
pain,  will  do  it  with  the  noble  feelings  that  animated  the 
pagan  executioner,  who  gave,  as  he  was  commanded,  the 
cup  of  poison  to  Socrates,  but  wept  as  he  gave  it. 

"  Oh,  woe  to  those  who  trample  on  the  mind, 
That  deathless  thing  !     They  know  not  what  they  do, 
Nor  what  they  deal  with.     Man,  perchance,  may  bind 
'The  flower  his  step  hath  bruised  ;  or  light  anew 
The  torch  he  quenches  ;  or  to  music  wind 

_Again  the  lyre-string  from  his  touch  that  flew ;  — 

(  But  for  the  soul,  oh,  tremble,  and  beware 

\  To  lay  rude  hands  upon  God's  mysteries  there  ! " 


FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT 


BOARD    OF   EDUCATION. 


MARCH,    1838. 


VOL.  I.  24 


FIRST  ANNUAL  REPORT 


BOARD    OF    EDUCATION, 


The  Board  of  Education,  created  by  an  act  of  the  Legis- 
lature, approved  2Qth  April,  1887,  ask  permission  to 
submit  their  First  Annual  Report. 

THE  Board  held  its  first  meeting  in  the  Council  Cham- 
ber in  Boston,  on  the  29th  June,  1837.  Authority  hav- 
ing been  given,  by  the  law  creating  the  Board,  to  appoint 
a  Secretary,  the  Honorable  Horace  Mann,  late  President 
of  the  Senate  of  the  Commonwealth,  was  elected  by  bal- 
lot to  that  office.  It  being  provided  that  the  Secretary 
should  receive  a  reasonable  compensation  for  his  services, 
not  exceeding  one  thousand  dollars  per  annum,  it  was 
unanimously  agreed  by  the  Board,  that  this  sum  should 
be  allowed  as  his  salary ;  -  it  being  understood  that  he 
should  devote  himself  exclusively  to  the  duties  of  his  of- 
fice. On  this  subject,  the  Board  will  ask  permission  to 
make  a  few  observations  in  the  sequel  of  their  report. 

The  duties  of  the  Board,  as  prescribed  by  the  statute, 
are,  1st,  to  prepare  and  lay  before  the  Legislature,  in  a 
printed  form,  on  or  before  the  second  Wednesday  in  Jan- 
uary, annually,  an  abstract  of  the  school  returns  received 
by  the  Secretary  of  the  Commonwealth,  and  2d,  to  make 
a  detailed  report  to  the  Legislature  of  all  their  doings, 

371 


372  FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT 

with  such  observations  as  their  experience  and  reflection 
may  suggest,  upon  the  condition  and  efficiency  of  our 
system  of  popular  education,  and  the  most  practicable 
means  of  improving  and  extending  it. 

The  first  duty  has  been  discharged.  The  Board  at  an 
early  day  confided  to  their  Secretary  the  duty  of  preparing 
an  abstract  of  the  school  returns.  This  abstract  has  been 
duly  submitted  to  the  Legislature,  in  a  highly  convenient 
form.  The  recapitulation  at  its  close,  supersedes  the 
necessity  of  presenting  in  this  place  any  summary  of  its 
contents.  Imperfect  as  such  a  document  must  nec'essarily 
be,  it  comprises  a  great  amount  of  valuable  information. 
The  Board  are  of  opinion,  that,  by  such  improvements  as 
experience  may  suggest,  it  will  be  in  their  power,  —  if 
authority  be  granted  to  them,  —  to  render  it  still  more 
instructive  and  useful.  It  is  respectfully  recommended, 
that  power  be  granted  to  the  Board,  by  the  Legislature, 
to  direct  such  amendments  in  the  mode  and  time  of 
making  the  returns,  and  in  the  mode  of*  keeping  the 
school-register,  as  will  more  effectually  answer  the  pur- 
poses for  which  the  returns  are  directed  to  be  made. 

It  is  made  the  duty  of  the  Secretary,  "  under  the  direc- 
tion of  the  Board,  to  collect  information  of  the  actual 
condition  and  efficiency  of  the  common  schools  and  other 
means  of  popular  education  ;  and  to  diffuse  as  widely  as 
possible,  throughout  every  part  of  the  Commonwealth, 
information  of  the  most  approved  and  successful  methods 
of  arranging  the  studies  and  conducting  the  education  of 
the  young." 

The  limited  powers  conferred  on  the  Board  left  them 
scarce  any  discretion  in  the  choice  of  the  means,  by  which 
they  could  enable  their  Secretary  to  discharge  his  duty  as 
thus  prescribed.  It  was  necessary  to  depend  almost  ex- 
clusively on  the  voluntary  co-operation  of  the  people  ; 


OF  THE  BOARD  OF  EDUCATION.          373 

and  no  way  suggested  itself  in  which  this  co-operation 
could  be  given  so  effectually,  as  through  the  medium  *of 
conventions,  called  in  each  county  of  the  Commonwealth, 
to  be  composed  of  teachers,  school-committee-men,  and 
the  friends  of  education  generally,  deputed  from  the  sev- 
eral towns  to  attend  these  conventions.  The  conventions 
were  so  arranged  as  to  time,  as  to  be  held  successively  at 
convenient  intervals  throughout  the  State,  in  order  that 
the  presence  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Board  might  be  given 
at  each  county  convention.  It  was  the  purpose  of  the 
Board,  that  these  meetings  should  also  be  attended  by 
such  members  of  their  own  body,  as  from  their  place  of 
residence  were  able  conveniently  to  be  present ;  and  this, 
when  other  engagements  permitted,  has  been  done.  In 
pursuance  of  these  views,  an  address  was  issued  by  the 
Board  to  the  people  of  the  Commonwealth,  a  copy  of 
which  will  be  found  subjoined  to  the  Report  of  the  Secre- 
tary, herewith  presented. 

By  way  of  preparation  for  the  county  conventions,  a 
series  of  questions  was  prepared  by  the  Secretary,  and 
widely  circulated  throughout  the  Commonwealth,  for  the 
purpose  of  drawing  forth  and  concentrating  information 
on  the  most  important  points,  connected  with  the  subject 
of  education.  A  copy  of  these  questions  is  also  sub- 
joined. 

At  the  appointed  time,  the  circuit  of  the  county  con- 
ventions was  commenced  by  their  Secretary,  and  the 
Board  feel  warranted  in  saying,  that  his  attendance  and 
public  addresses  at  these  meetings  were  productive  of  the 
happiest  effects.  Seconded  by  an  enlightened  zeal  for 
the  improvement  of  education,  on  the  part  of  those  by 
whom  these  conventions  were  attended,  it  is  believed  that 
his  services  and  efforts  have  been  highly  instrumental  in 
awakening  a  new  interest  in  the  cause  of  school  educa- 


374  FIRST    ANNUAL   REPORT 

tlon.  At  the  semi-annual  meeting  of  the  Board,  on  the 
fii*st  day  of  the  present  month,  a  detailed  REPORT  of  his 
proceedings  was  submitted  by  the  Secretary,  with  various 
observations  on  the  leading  topics  which  had  engaged  his 
attention,  in  the  discharge  of-  his  duty.  This  document 
will  be  found  appended  to  the  present  report,  and  the 
Board  refer  to  it  with  great  satisfaction,  as  a  result  of  the 
organization  of  the  Board  of  Education  for  the  first  year 
of  its  existence,  in  the  highest  degree  creditable  to  its 
author,  and  likely  to  prove  equally  beneficial  to  the  cause 
of  education  and  acceptable  to  the  people  of  the  Com- 
monwealth. 

It  is  not  the  province  of  the  Board  of  Education  to 
submit  to  the  Legislature,  in  the  form  of  specific  projects 
of  law,  those  measures,  which  they  may  deem  advisable 
for  the  improvement  of  the  schools  and  the  promotion  of 
the  cause  of  education.  That  duty  is  respectfully  left  by 
the  Board,  with  the  wisdom  of  the  Legislature  and  its 
committees,  on  whom  it  is  by  usage  devolved.  Neither 
will  it  be  expected  of  the  Board,  on  the  present  occasion, 
to  engage  in  a  lengthened  discussion  of  topics,  fully 
treated  in  their  Secretary's  report,  to  which  they  beg 
leave  to  refer,  as  embodying  a  great  amount  of  fact,  and 
the  result  of  extensive  observation  skilfully  generalized. 
The  Board  ask  permission  only  to  submit  a  few  remarks 
on  some  of  the  more  important  topics  connected  with  the 
general  subject. 

1.  As  the  comfort  and  progress  of  children  at  school 
depend,  to  a  very  considerable  degree,  on  the  proper  and 
commodious  construction  of  schoolhouses,  the  Board  ask 
leave  to  invite  the  particular  attention  of  the  Legislature 
to  their  Secretary's  remarks  on  this  subject.  As  a  general 
observation,  it  is  no  doubt  too  true,  that  the  schoolhouses 
in  most  of  the  districts  of  the  Commonwealth  are  of  an 


OP  THE  BOARD  OF  EDUCATION.          375 

imperfect  construction.  It  is  apprehended  that  sometimes 
at  less  expense  than  is  now  incurred,  and  in  other  cases, 
by  a  small  additional  expense,  schoolhouses  much  more 
conducive  to  the  health  and  comfort,  and  consequently  to 
the  happiness  and  progress  of  children,  might  be  erected. 
Nor  would  it  be  necessary,  in  most  cases,  in  order  to  in- 
troduce the  desired  improvements,  that  new  buildings 
should  be  constructed.  Perhaps  in  a  majority  of  cases, 
the  end  might  be  attained  to  a  considerable  degree,  by 
alterations  and  additions  to  the  present  buildings.  It  is 
the  purpose  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Board,  as  early  as 
practicable,  to  prepare  and  submit  a  special  report  on  the 
construction  of  schoolhouses.  When  this  document  shall 
be  laid  before  them,  it  will  be  for  the  Legislature  to  judge, 
whether  any  encouragement  can,  with  good  effect,  be  of- 
fered from  the  school-fund,  with  a  view  to  induce  the 
towns  of  the  Commonwealth  to  adopt  those  improvements 
in  the  construction  of  schoolhouses.  which  experience  and 
reason  show  to  be  of  great  practical  importance  in  carry- 
ing on  the  business  of  education. 

2.  Very  much  of  the  efficiency  of  the  best  system  of 
school  education  depends  upon  the  fidelity  and  zeal  with 
which  the  office  of  a  school-committee-man  is  performed. 
The  Board  deem  it  unnecessary  to  dila.te  upon  a  subject 
so  ably  treated  by  their  Secretary.  The  difficulties  to  be 
surmounted  before  the  services  of  able  and  faithful  school- 
committee-men  can  be  obtained,  in  perhaps  a  majority  of 
the  towns  of  the  Commonwealth,  are  confessedly  great 
and  various.  They  can  be  thoroughly  overcome  only  by 
the  spirit  of  true  patriotism,  generously  exerting  itself  to- 
ward the  great  end  of  promoting  the  intellectual  improve- 
ment of  fellow-men.  But  it  is  in  the  power  of  the  Legis- 
lature to  remove  some  of  the  obstacles,  among  which  not 
the  least  considerable  is  the  pecuniary  sacrifice  involved 


376  FIRST   ANNUAL    REPORT 

in  the  faithful  and  laborious  discharge  of  the  duties  of 
the  school  committee.  The  Board  have  understood,  with 
great  satisfaction,  that  the  subject  has  been  brought  before 
the  House  of  Representatives.  They  know  of  no  reason 
why  the  members  of  school  committees  should  not  receive 
a  reasonable  compensation,  as  well  as  other  municipal 
officers,  of  whom  it  is  not  usually  expected  that  they 
should  serve  the  public  gratuitously.  There  are  none 
whose  labors,  faithfully  performed,  are  of  greater  moment 
to  the  general  well-being.  The  duties  of  a  member  of  a 
school  committee,  if  conscientiously  discharged,  are  oner- 
ous ;  and  ought  not  to  be  rendered  more  so,  by  being- 
productive  of  a  heavy  pecuniary  loss,  in  the  wholly  unre- 
quited devotion  of  time  and  labor  to  the  public  good. 

3.  The  subject  of  the  education  of  teachers  has  been 
more  than  once  brought  before  the  Legislature,  and  is  of 
the  very  highest  importance  in  connection  with  the  im- 
provement of  our  schools.  That  there  are  all  degrees  of 
skill  and  success  on  the  part  of  teachers,  is  matter  of  too 
familiar  observation  to  need  repetition  ;  and  that  these 
must  depend,  in  no  small  degree,  on  the  experience  of 
the  teacher,  and  in  his  formation  under  a  good  discipline 
and  method  of  instruction  in  early  life,  may  be  admitted 
without  derogating,  in  any  measure,  from  the  importance 
of  natural  gifts  and  aptitude,  in  fitting  men  for  this  as 
for  the  other  duties  of  society.  Nor  can  it  be  deemed 
unsafe  to  insist  that,  while  occupations  requiring  a  very 
humble  degree  of  intellectual  effort  and  attainment  de- 
mand a  long-continued  training,  it  cannot  be  that  the  ar- 
duous and  manifold  duties  of  the  instructor  of  youth 
should  be  as  well  performed  without  as  with  a  specific 
preparation  for  them.  In  fact,  it  must  be  admitted,  as 
the  voice  of-  reason  and  experience,  that  institutions  for 
the  formation  of  teachers  must  be  established  among  us, 


OF  THE  BOARD  OF  EDUCATION.          377 

before  the  all-important  work  of  forming  the  minds  of 
our  children  can  be  performed  in  the  best  possible  man- 
ner, and  with  the  greatest  attainable  success. 

No  one  who  has  been  the  witness  of  the  ease  and  effect 
with  which  instruction  is  imparted  by  one  teacher,  and 
the  tedious  pains-taking  and  unsatisfactory  progress  which 
mark  the  labors  of  another  of  equal  ability  and  knowl- 
edge, and  operating  on  materials  equally  good,  can  enter- 
tain a  doubt  that  there  is  a  mastery  in  teaching  as  in 
every  other  art.  Nor  is  it  less  obvious  that,  within  reason- 
able limits,  this  skill  and  this  mastery  may  themselves 
be  made  the  subjects  of  instruction,  and  be  communicated 
to  others. 

We  are  not  left  to  the  deductions  of  reason  on  this  sub- 
ject. In  those  foreign  countries,  where  the  greatest  at- 
tention has  been  paid  to  the  work  of  education,  schools 
for  teachers  have  formed  an  important  feature  in  their 
systems,  arid  with  the  happiest  result.  The  art  of  im- 
parting instruction  has  been  found,  like  every  other  art, 
to  improve  by  cultivation  in  institutions  established  for 
that  specific  object.  New  importance  has  been  attached 
to  the  calling  of  the  instructor  by  public  opinion,  from 
the  circumstance  that  his  vocation  has  been  deemed  one 
requiring  systematic  preparation  and  culture.  Whatever 
tends  to  degrade  the  profession  of  the  teacher,  in  his  own 
mind  or  that  of  the  public,  of  course  impairs  his  useful- 
ness ;  and  this  result  must  follow  from  regarding  instruc- 
tion as  a  business  which  in  itself  requires  no  previous 
training. 

The  duties  which  devolve  upon  the  teachers  even  of 
our  Common  Schools,  particularly  when  attended  by  large 
numbers  of  both  sexes,  and  of  advanced  years  for  learn- 
ers (as  is  often  the  case),  are  various,  and  difficult  of  per- 
formance. For  their  faithful  execution,  no  degree  of 


378  FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT 

talent  and  qualification  is  too  great ;  and  when  we  reflect 
that  in  the  nature  of  things  only  a  moderate  portion  of 
both  can,  in  ordinary  cases,  be  expected,  for  the  slender 
compensation  afforded  the  teacher,  we  gain  a  new  view 
of  the  necessity  of  bringing  to  his  duties  the  advantage  of 
previous  training  in  the  best  mode  of  discharging  them. 

A  very  considerable  part  of  the  benefit,  which  those 
who  attend  our  schools  might  derive  from  them,  is  un- 
questionably lost  for  want  of  mere  skill  in  the  business 
of  instruction,  on  the  part  of  the  teacher.  This  falls 
with  especial  hardship  on  that  part  of  our  youthful  popu- 
lation, who  are  able  to  enjoy,  but  for  a  small  portion  of 
the  year,  the  advantage  of  the  schools.  For  them  it  is 
of  peculiar  importance,  that,  from  the  moment  of  enter- 
ing the  school,  every  hour  should  be  employed  to  the 
greatest  advantage,  and  every  facility  in  imparting  knowl- 
edge, and  every  means  of  awakening  and  guiding  the 
mind,  be  put  into  instant  operation  :  and  where  this  is 
done,  two  months  of  schooling  would  be  as  valuable  as  a 
year  passed  under  a  teacher  destitue  of  experience  and  skill. 
The  Board  cannot  but  express  the  sanguine  hope,  that 
the  time  is  not  far  distant,  when  the  resources  of  public 
or  private  liberality  will  be  applied  in  Massachusetts  for 
the  foundation  of  an  institution  for  the  formation  of 
teachers,  in  which  the  present  existing  defect  will  be 
amply  supplied. 

4.  The  subject  of  district-school  libraries  is  deemed  of 
very  great  importance  by  the  Board.  A  foundation  was 
made  for  the  formation  of  such  libraries,  by  the  Act  of 
12th  April,  1837,  authorizing  an  expenditure  by  each 
district  of  thirty  dollars,  for  this  purpose,  the  first  year, 
and  ten  each  succeeding  year.  Such  economy  has  been 
introduced  into  the  business  of  printing,  that  even  these 
small  sums  judiciously  applied  for  a  term  of  years  will 


OF  THE  BOARD  OP  EDUCATION.          379 

amply  suffice  for  the  desired  object.  To  the  attainment 
of  this  end,  it  is  in  the  power  of  booksellers  and  publish- 
ers to  render  the  most  material  aid.  There  is  no  reason 
to  doubt,  that  if  neat  editions  of  books  suitable  for  Com- 
mon-School libraries  were  published  and  sold  at  a  very 
moderate  rate,  plainly  and  substantially  bound,  and 
placed  in  cases  well  adapted  for  convenient  transporta- 
tion, and  afterwards  to  serve  as  the  permanent  place  of 
deposit,  it  would  induce  many  of  the  districts  in  the  Com- 
monwealth to  exercise  the  power  of  raising  money  for 
school  libraries.  A  beginning  once  made,  steady  prog- 
ress would  in  many  cases  be  sure  to  follow.  Where  cir- 
cumstances did  not  admit  the  establishment  of  a  library 
in  each  district,  it  might  very  conveniently  be  deposited 
a  proportionate  part  of  the  year  in  each  district  succes- 
sively. But  it  would  be  highly  desirable  that  each  school- 
house  should  be  furnished  with  a  case  and  shelves,  suit- 
able for  the  proper  arrangement  and  safe -keeping  of 
books.  The  want  of  such  a  provision  makes  it  almost 
impossible  to  begin  the  collection  of  a  library ;  and  where 
such  provision  is  made,  the  library  would  be  nearly  sure 
to  receive  a  steady  increase. 

Although  the  Board  are  of  opinion,  that  nothing  would 
more  promote  the  cause  of  education  among  us,  than  the 
introduction  of  libraries  into  our  district  schools,  they 
have  not  deemed  it  advisable  to  recommend  any  measure 
looking  to  the  preparation  of 'a  series  of  volumes,  of  which 
such  a  library  should  be  composed,  and  their  distribution, 
at  public  expense.  Whatever  advantages  would  belong- 
to  a  library  consisting  of  books  expressly  written  for  the 
purpose,  obvious  difficulties  and  dangers  would  attend 
such  an  undertaking.  The  Board  deem  it  far  more 
advisable  to  leave  this  work  to  the  enterprise  and  judg- 
ment of  publishers,  who  would,  no  doubt,  find  it  for 


380  FIRST    ANNUAL   REPORT 

their  interest  to  make  preparations  to  satisfy  a  demand 
for  district-school  libraries  in  the  way  above  indicated. 

In  this  connection  the  Board  would  observe,  that  much 
good  might  unquestionably  be  effected  by  the  publication 
of  a  periodical  journal  or  paper,  of  which  the  exclusive 
object  should  be  to  promote  the  cause  of  education, 
especially  of  Common-School  education.  Such  a  journal, 
conducted  on  the  pure  principles  of  Christian  philan- 
thropy, of  rigid  abstinence  from  party  and  sect,  sacredly 
devoted  to  the  one  object  of  education,  to  collecting  and 
diffusing  information  on  this  subject,  to  the  discussion  of 
the  numerous  important  questions  which  belong  to  it,  to 
the  formation  of  a  sound  and  intelligent  public  opinion, 
and  the  excitement  of  a  warm  and  energetic  public  sen- 
timent, in  favor  of  our  schools,  might  render  incalculable 
service.  The  Board  are  decidedly  of  opinion,  that  a 
journal  of  this  description  would  be  the  most  valuable 
auxiliary  which  could  be  devised,  to  carry  into  execution 
the  enlightened  policy  of  the  government,  in  legislating 
for  the  improvement  of  the  schools,  and  they  indulge  a 
sanguine  hope  that  its  establishment  will  shortly  be  wit- 
nessed. 

5.  The  subject  of  school-books  is  perhaps  one  of  more 
immediate  and  pressing  interest.  The  multiplicity  of 
school-books,  and  the  imperfection  of  many  of  them,  is 
one  of  the  greatest  evils  at  present  felt  in  our  Common 
Schools.  The  Board  know  of  no  way,  in  which  this  evil 
could  be  more  effectually  remedied,  than  by  the  selection 
of  the  best  of  each  class  now  in  use,  and  a  formal  recom- 
mendation of  them  by  the  Board  of  Education.  Such  a 
recommendation  would  probably  cause  them  to  be  gen- 
erally adopted ;  but  should  this  not  prove  effectual,  and 
the  evil  be  found  to  continue,  it  might  hereafter  be 
deemed  expedient  to  require  the  use  of  the  books  thus 


OP  THE  BOARD  OP  EDUCATION.         381 

recommended,  as  a  condition  of  receiving  a  share  of  the 
benefit  of  the  school  fund. 

The  foregoing  observations  are  all  that  now  occur  to 
the  Board  of  Education,  as  proper  to  be  made  to  the  Legis- 
lature, in  connection  with  the  improvement  of  our  Com- 
mon Schools.  They  beg  leave  to  submit  an  additional 
remark  on  the  subject  of  their  own  sphere  of  operations. 
It  is  evident,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  that  much  of 
the  efficiency  and  usefulness  of  the  Board  must  depend 
on  the  zeal  and  fidelity  of  its  Secretary,  and  that  it  is  all- 
important  to  command,  in  this  office,  the  services  of  an 
individual  of  distinguished  talent  and  unquestioned 
character.  No  other  qualifications  will  inspire  the  con- 
fidence generally  of  the  people ;  and  without  that 
confidence,  it  is  impossible  that  his  labors  or  those  of  the 
Board  should  be  crowned  with  success.  The  Board  ask 
permission  to  state,  that  they  deem  themselves  very 
fortunate  in  having  engaged  the  services  of  a  gentleman 
so  highly  qualified  as  their  Secretary,  to  discharge  the  in- 
teresting duties  of  his  trust ;  and  they  respectfully  sub- 
mit to  the  Legislature,  the  expediency  of  raising  his 
compensation  to  an  amount,  which  could  more  fairly  be 
regarded  as  a  satisfactory  equivalent  for  the  employment 
of  all  his  time.  The  Board  also  think,  that  a  small 
allowance  should  be  made  for  the  contingent  expenses  of 
the  Secretary  in  the  discharge  of  his  duties,  such  as  post- 
age, stationery,  and  occasional  clerk-hire.  It  is  just, 
however,  to  add,  that  this  proposal  for  an  increase  of 
salary  is  made  wholly  without  suggestion  on  the  part 
of  the  Secretary. 

In  conclusion,  the  Board  would  tender  their  ac- 
knowledgments to  their  fellow-citizens,  who,  by  attending 
on  the  meetings  of  the  county  conventions,  or  in  any 
other  way,  have  afforded  their  co-operation  in  the  pro- 


382  FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT 

motion  of  the  great  cause  of  popular  education.  At 
most  of  these  meetings,  permanent  county  conventions 
for  the  improvement  of  education  have  been  organized. 
Spirited  addresses  have,  in  almost  every  case,  emanated 
from  the  county  meetings,  well  calculated  to  impart  vigor 
and  warmth  to  the  public  sentiment  in  reference  to  the 
cause  of  education.  On  the  whole,  the  Board  have  reason 
to  hope,  that  an  impulse  has  been  given  to  the  public 
mind  on  the  subject  of  education,  from  which  valuable 
effects  may  be  anticipated.  It  will  be  their  strenuous 
effort,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Legislature,  and  as  far 
as  the  powers  vested  in  them  extend,  to  encourage  and 
augment  the  interest  which  has  been  excited,  and  they 
hope,  as  they  shall  acquire  experience,  that  their  labors 
will  become  more  efficient.  They  do  not  flatter  them- 
selves that  great  and  momentous  reforms  are  to  be  ef- 
fected at  once.  Where  the  means  employed  are  those  of 
calm  appeal  to  the  understanding  and  the  heart,  a  grad- 
ual and  steady  progress  is  all  that  should  be  desired.  The 
schools  of  Massachusetts  are  not  every  thing  that  we  could 
wish,  but  public  opinion  is  sound  in  reference  to  their 
improvement.  The  voice  of  reason  will  not  be  uttered  in 
vain.  Experience,  clearly  stated  in  its  results,  will  com- 
mand respect,  and  the  Board  entertain  a  confident  opinion 
that  the  increased  attention  given  to  the  subject  will  re- 
sult in  making  our  system  of  Common-School  education 
fully  worthy  of  the  intelligence  of  the  present  day,  and 
of  the  ancient  renown  of  Massachusetts. 

All  which  is  respectfully  submitted  by 

EDWARD   EVERETT, 
GEORGE   HULL, 
JAMES  G.   CARTER, 
EDMUND   DWIGHT, 
GEORGE   PUTNAM, 
E.  A.   NEWTON 

ROBERT 'RANTOUL,  Jus., 

JARED  SPARKS. 
Boston,  February  1, 1838. 


OP  THE  BOARD  OP  EDUCATION.          383 

NOTE.  —  Rev.  Messrs.  EMEKSON  DAVIS  of  Westfield,  and  THOMAS 
ROBBINS  of  Rochester,  members  of  the  Board,  were  prevented,  by  the 
distance  of  their  respective  places  of  residence  from  Boston,  from  being 
present  at  the  adjourned  meeting  of  the  Board  at  which  the  foregoing 
report  was  adopted. 


FIRST  ANNUAL  REPORT 


SECRETARY  OF  THE  BOARD  OF  EDUCATION. 


To  THE  BOARD  OF  EDUCATION  :  — 

GENTLEMEN  :  —  The  act  of  the  Legislature,  under  which 
you  were  constituted,  authorized  the  appointment  of  a 
Secretary,  and  specifically  prescribed  his  duties  in  the 
following  words : — the  Secretary  "shall,  under  the  di- 
rection of  the  Board,  collect  information  of  the  actual 
condition  and  efficiency  of  the  Common  Schools  and  other 
means  of  popular  education;  and  diffuse,  as  widely  as 
possible,  throughout  every  part  of  the  Commonwealth, 
information  of  the  most  approved  and  successful  methods 
of  arranging  the  studies  and  conducting  the  education  of 
the  young,  to  the  end  that  all  children  in  this  Common- 
wealth, who  depend  upon  the  Common  Schools  for  instruc- 
tion, may  have  the  best  education  which  those  schools  can 
be  made  to  impart"  Having  accepted  the  office  of  Sec- 
retary of  the  Board,  I  entered  upon  the  public  discharge  of 
its  duties,  about  the  close  of  the  month  of  August  last. 
But  before  devoting  even  the  brief  period  of  three  months 
to  a  beginning  of  the  work  of  "  collecting  information  of 
the  actual  condition  and  efficiency  "  of  about  three  thou- 
sand different  public  schools,  and  several  hundred  perma- 
nent private  schools  and  academies,  I  was  obliged  to  return 
to  this  city,  in  order  to  prepare  the  "  Annual  Abstract  of  the 

884 


THE  SECRETARY'S  FIRST  ANNUAL  REPORT.         385 

School  Returns,"  which,  by  a  law  of  the  Commonwealth, 
was  to  be  prepared  and  laid  before  the  Legislature,  in  a 
printed  form,  on  or  before  the  second  Wednesday  in  Jan- 
uary inst. :  —  the  labor  of  that  preparation  having,  by  a 
vot3  of  the  Board,  been  devolved  upon  me.  This  last 
work  has  supplied  me  with  almost  incessant  occupation 
ever  since  my  return.  It  soon  became  a  question,  there- 
fore, in  my  own  mind,  whether  I  ought  not  to  consider 
myself  debarred,  by  the  briefness  of  the  time,  and  the 
magnitude  of  the  labor,  from  attempting,  at  this  early 
period,  to  submit  to  the  Board  any  report,  relative  to  the 
"  condition  and  efficiency  of  our  Common  Schools  and 
other  means  of  popular  education."  But  as  I  was  per- 
fectly satisfied  that  there  were  a  few  classes  of  facts,  and 
some  important  views,  pertaining  to  this  subject,  in  re- 
gard to  which  a  more  thorough  examination  would  only 
supply  additional  facts  of  the  same  kind,  and  corroborate 
the  same  views  by  additional  arguments,  I  thought  it 
clearly  to  be  my  duty  not  to  delay  their  communications 
for  the  sake  of  presenting  them  in  a  less  imperfect  form, 
or  of  fortifying  obvious  conclusions  with  cumulative  evi- 
dence and  argument. 

I  proceed,  therefore,  to  state  the  principal  sources  of 
information  consulted,  together  with  some  of  the  facts 
learned  and  of  the  conclusions  formed. 

Between  the  28th  of  August  and  the  15th  of  Novem- 
ber last,  I  met  conventions  of  the  friends  of  education 
in  every  county  in  the  State  except  Suffolk.  With  the 
exception  of  two  counties,  these  conventions  were  very 
fully  attended,  almost  all  the  towns  in  the  respective 
counties  being  represented.  The  character  of  the  con- 
ventions for  intelligence  and  moral  worth  has  probably 
never  been  surpassed.  Selfish  and  illaudable  motives  do 
not  tempt  men  to  abandon  business,  and  incur  expense, 

VOL.  i.  26 


386  THE  SECEET ART'S 

to  attend  distant  meetings,  when  no  emolument  is  to  be 
secured,  nor  offices  apportioned.  A  desire  to  promote  a 
philanthropic  object,  whose  full  beneficence  will  not  be 
realized  until  its  authors  shall  have  left  the  stage,  must 
have  been  the  honorable  impulse  which  assembled  them 
together. 

Statements,  uncontradicted  and  unquestioned,  publicly 
made  at  these  conventions,  by  gentlemen  worthy  of  entire 
confidence,  respecting  facts  alleged  to  be  within  their  own 
personal  knowledge,  I  have  considered  as  worthy  of  full 
reliance. 

Some  weeks  before  commencing  this  tour  of  explora- 
tion, I  addressed  to  the  school  committee  of  every  town 
a  circular  letter,  specifying  a  number  of  topics  upon 
which  information  was  sought.  A  copy  of  that  circular, 
together  with  the  Address  of  the  Board  of  Education, 
referred  to  therein,  is  appended  to  this  report.  Direct 
written  answers  have  been  received  from  nearly  half  the 
towns  in  the  State,  together  containing  more  than  half 
its  population.  This  information  I  regard  as  of  an  au- 
thentic and  official  character. 

Having,  fortunately  for  this  purpose,  been  so  situated 
as  to  form  a  personal  acquaintance  with  very  many  of 
those  gentlemen,  who,  for  the  last  ten  years,  have  been 
members  of  one  or  the  other  branch  of  our  State  Legisla- 
ture, I  determined  to  avail  myself,  as  far  as  practicable,  of 
this  advantage,  to  extend  into  details,  and  render  more 
minute  and  particular,  my  information  upon  the  great 
subject  intrusted  to  me.  I  think  it  not  unworthy  to  be 
mentioned,  that,  for  this  purpose,  I  adopted  a  mode  of 
travelling  which  made  me  perfect  master  of  my  own  move- 
ments, and  rendered  it  always  convenient  for  me  to  stop 
and  make  inquiries,  and  to  turn  off  my  nearest  course, 
whenever  valuable  information  was  supposed  to  lie  on 


FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT.  387 

either  side  of  my  direct  route.  In  this  way  I  have  travelled 
between  five  and  six  hundred  miles,  besides  going  to  Dukes 
County  and  Nantucket.  I  have  been  able,  by  this  means, 
to  inspect  the  condition  of  many  schoolhouses;  and  I 
have  personally  examined,  or  obtained  exact  and  specific 
information  regarding  the  relative  size,  construction,  and 
condition  of  about  eight  hundred  of  those  buildings,  and 
general  information  concerning,  at  least,  a  thousand 
more.  These,  together  with  the  school-returns,  which 
have  been  received  this  year  from  two  hundred  and 
ninety-four  out  of  the  three  hundred  and  five  towns  in 
the  Commonwealth,  and  such  limited  correspondence  as 
I  have  been  able  to  conduct,  have  been  the  principal 
sources  of  information  consulted. 

It  would  be  depriving  many  persons  of  a  most  honor- 
able tribute  to  which  they  are  completely  entitled,  and 
it  would  withhold  from  the  friends  of  the  sacred  cause  of 
education  one  of  the  highest  satisfactions,  did  I  omit  to 
declare,  that  neither  at  the  conventions  which  have  been 
held  in  the  several  counties,  nor  in  my  intercourse  or  cor- 
respondence with  any  one,  has  there  been  infused  into  this 
cause  the  slightest  ingredient  of  partisan  politics.  In 
regard  to  this  great  subject,  all  have  reverted  to  their 
natural  relations  as  fellow-men  ;  discarding  strifes  about 
objects  which  are  temporary,  for  interests  which  are  en- 
during. In  a  spirit  of  harmony  and  unity,  having 
brought  the  facts  of  individual  experience  and  observa- 
tion into  common  stock,  they  have  regarded  them  as  a 
fund,  from  which  the  wisest  results  were  to  be  wrought 
out  by  the  aid  of  common  counsels. 

The  object  of  the  Common-School  system  of  Massa- 
chusetts was  to  give  to  every  child  in  the  Commonwealth 
a  free,  straight,  solid  pathway,  by  which  he  could  walk 
directly  up  from  the  ignorance  of  an  infant  to  a  knowl- 


388  THE  SECRETARY'S 

edge  of  the  primary  duties  of  a  man  ;  and  would  acquire 
a  power  and  an  invincible  will  to  discharge  them.  Have 
our  children  such  a  way  ?  Are  they  walking  in  it  ?.  Why 
do  so  many,  who  enter  it,  falter  therein  ?  Are  there  not 
many  who  miss  it  altogether  ?  What  can  be  done  to  re- 
claim them  ?  What  can  be  done  to  rescue  faculties, 
powers,  divine  endowments,  graciously  designed  for  indi- 
vidual and  social  good,  from  being  perverted  to  individual 
and  social  calamity  ?  These  are  the  questions  of  deep 
and  intense  interest,  which  I  have  proposed  to  myself,  and 
upon  which  I  have  sought  for  information  and  counsel. 

Our  institutions  for  the  education  of  our  children  de- 
pend for  their  success  not  more  upon  the  perfection  of 
their  individual  parts  than  upon  their  just  adaptation 
and  concurrent  working.  The  co-operation  of  many  dif- 
ferent agents  is  essential  to  their  prosperity.  In  exam- 
ining the  causes  of  failure,  therefore,  in  a  system  so  ex- 
tensive and  complex,  not  only  ought  its  several  parts  to 
be  scrutinized  and  their  details  mastered,  but  the  relation 
and  fitness  of  each  wheel  to  the  whole  machinery  should 
be  scanned ;  because  parts,  individually  perfect,  may 
counterwork  each  other  from  mal-adjustment.  and  thus 
impair  or  even  wholly  destroy  the  desired  results.  I  shall 
make  no  apology,  therefore,  for  discarding  all  specula- 
tion and  theory,  and  for  descending  at  once  to  more  use- 
ful, though  perhaps  less  interesting  particulars ;  because 
nothing,  however  minute,  can  be  unimportant,  which  will 
ultimately  affect  the  value  of  the  product. 

I  am  bound,  here,  to  make  a  preliminary  remark,  to  be 
steadily  kept  in  view  as  a  qualification  of  this  entire  re- 
port. In  pointing  out  errors  in  our  system,  that  they 
may  be  rectified,  I  wish  at  the  same  time  to  aver  my 
belief  in  the  vast  preponderance  of  its  excellences  over 
its  defects.  A  specification  of  the  latter,  therefore,  how- 


FIRST  ANNUAL   REPORT.  389 

ever  extensive,  is  not  to  be  understood  as  questioning  the 
manifold  superiority  of  the  former.  So,  too,  in  advert- 
ing to  non-performances  of  duty  in  any  one  class  or  body 
of  men,  or  to  adverse  influences,  exerted  by  any  other 
class,  I  disclaim  all.  personal  implication  whatever; 
believing  that  the  defects  are  mainly  chargeable  on  the 
system  rather  than  the  individual ;  and  that,  in  some 
points  at  least,  the  errors  of  the  system  have  been  recti- 
fied by  the  fidelity  of  its  administrators. 

There  are  four  cardinal  topics,  under  which  all  consid- 
erations, relating  to  our  Common  Schools,  naturally 
arrange  themselves.  First  in  order  is  the  situation,  con- 
struction, condition,  and  number  of  the  school  houses.  I 
mention  the  number  of  the  schoolhouses  under  this  head, 
because,  in  populous  places,  there  is  a  temptation  to  build 
too  few,  and  to  compact  too  many  scholars  into  one  house; 
while  towns  sparsely  populated  are  beset  with  the  oppo- 
site temptation,  of  making  too  minute  a  subdivision  of 
their  territory  into  districts ;  and  thus,  in  attempting  to 
accommodate  all  with  a  schoolhousc  near  by,  the  accom- 
modation itself  is  substantially  destroyed.  In  many  cases, 
this  pursuit  of  the  incident  works  a  forfeiture  of  the  prin- 
cipal. A  schoolhouse  is  erected  near  by,  but  it  is  at  the 
expense  of  having  a  school  in  it,  so  short,  as  to  be  of  but 
little  value. 

Secondly,  the  manner,  whether  intelligent  and  faithful, 
or  inadequate  and  neglectful,  in  which  school-committee- 
men  discharge  their  duties. 

Thirdly,  the  interest  felt  by  the  community  in  the  edu- 
cation of  all  its  children ;  and  the  position  in  which  a 
certain  portion  of  that  community  stand  in  relation  to  the 
free  schools. 

Fourthly,  the  competency  of  teachers. 

First.  When  it  is  considered,  that  more  than  five-sixths 


390  THE  SECRETARY'S 

of  all  the  children  in  the  State  spend  a  considerable  por- 
tion of  the  most  impressible  period  of  their  lives  in  our 
schoolhouses,  the  general  condition  of  those  buildings,  and 
their  influences  upon  the  young,  stand  forth,  at  once,  as 
topics  of  prominence  and  magnitude.  The  construction  of 
schoolhouses  connects  itself  closely  with  the  love  of  study, 
with  proficiency,  health,  anatomical  formation,  and  length 
of  life.  These  are  great  interests,  and  therefore  suggest 
great  duties.  It  is  believed  that,  in  some  important  par- 
ticulars, their  structure  can  be  improved  without  the 
slightest  additional  expense ;  and  that,  in  other  respects,  a 
small  advance  in  cost  would  be  returned  a  thousand-fold 
in  the  improvement  of  those  habits,  tastes,  and  sentiments 
of  our  children,  which  are  so  soon  to  be  developed  into 
public  manners,  institutions,  and  laws,  and  to  become  un- 
changeable history.  But  this  topic  of  schoolhouse  archi- 
tecture is  too  extensive  for  present  examination.  It  is 
my  intention,  as  early  as  practicable,  to  prepare  a  separate 
report,  which  shall  comprise  under  one  view,  and  in  some 
detail,  the  essentials  of  an  edifice  devoted  to  the  improve- 
ment of  the  whole  life,  by  improving  its  beginning. 

Secondly.  School-committee-men,  both  prudential  and 
superintending,  occupy  a  controlling  position  in  relation 
to  our  Common  Schools.  They  are  the  administrators  of 
the  system  ;  and  in  proportion  to  the  fidelity  and  intelli- 
gence exercised  by  them,  the  system  will  flourish  or  de- 
cline. 

Although  it  is  not  always  in  the  power  of  school  com- 
mittees to  introduce  into  the  schools  devoted  and  accom- 
plished teachers ;  yet  it  is  in  their  power,  and  it  is  a  most 
responsible  and  solemn  part  of  their  duty,  not  to  inflict 
upon  the  children  of  a  whole  district  the  calamity  of  an 
ignorant,  ill-tempered,  or  profane  teacher.  It  is  no  trivial 
arbitrament  to  decide,  whether  a  school  shall  be  a  bless- 


FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT.  391 

ing  or  a  nuisance,  and  therefore  the  question  of  a  teach- 
er's fitness  is  not  to  be  guessed  at,  but  solemnly  pondered. 
If  the  husbandman,  by  any  effort  of  body  or  of  mind,  by 
toil  or  supplication,  could  foredoom  and  predestinate 
what  sort  of  seasons  should  spread  mildew  and  barrenness 
over  his  fields,  and  leave  him  empty  granaries,  or  what 
should  make  his  pastures  luxuriant  and  heap  his  garners, 
he  surely  would  not  be  content  with  conjecture,  with  su- 
perficial and  scanty  inquiry,  or  with  hasty  decisions.  And 
yet  what  the  seasons  are  to  the  fields  and  crops  of  the 
farmer,  the  teacher  is  to  the  children  of  the  school.  Nay, 
more ;  he  is  season  and  cultivation  also.  No  part,  there- 
fore, of  the  examination  of  applicants  for  schools  is  form. 
It  is  all  substance.  It  is  all  pregnant  with  good  or  evil ; 
because  the  certificate  of  the  committee  is  a  commission 
to  the  teacher,  under  which  he  may  usurp  a  place  to  do 
but  little  good,  where  another  would  do  much  ;  or  under 
which,  perhaps,  he  may  do  great  and  remediless  harm, 
without  any  admixture  of  good. 

The  law  of  1826  required  school  committees  to  obtain 
evidence  of  the  good  moral  character  of  all  instructors, 
and  to  ascertain,  "by  personal  examination  or  otherwise, 
their  literary  qualifications  and  capacity  for  the  govern- 
ment of  schools."  In  the  Revised  Statutes,  the  words 
"  or  otherwise  "  were  intentionally  omitted.  Hence  the 
duty  of  personal  examination  became,  in  all  cases,  imper- 
ative. So  great,  however,  is  the  tax  imposed  by  this 
requirement  upon  the  time  of  the  committees,  that  from 
the  best  information  I  have  been  able  to  obtain,  I  am  led 
to  believe,  that  in  a  majority  of  instances,  the  examination 
is  either  wholly  omitted,  or  is  formal  and  superficial,  rather 
than  intent  and  thorough. 

The  engagement  of  a  teacher  by  the  prudential  com- 
mittee, subject  to  the  approval  of  the  committee  of  the 


392  THE  SECRETARY'S 

town,  is  itself  a  step  of  great  importance  ;  because  there 
are  intrinsic  objections  to  the  use  of  the  veto  power  by 
the  latter,  and  it  can  never  be  exercised  without  reluc- 
tance and  hazard.  The  prudential  committee  ought  not, 
therefore,  to  be  compelled  to  close  a  bargain  at  the  first 
offer,  but  he  should  have  opportunity  for  full  inquiries, 
or,  at  least,  for  availing  himself  of  such  information  as 
might  come  in  his  way,  during  the  season.  The  la\v 
fixes  no  time  for  the  election  of  prudential-committee- 
men,  when  chosen  by  the  districts.  In  some  large  dis- 
tricts, through  which  I  passed  late  in  the  autumn,  that 
officer  had  not  been  chosen  for  the  current  year.  When 
chosen,  he  could  have  no  opportunity  for  extended  in- 
quiry or  discriminating  selection,  but  would  be  almost 
compelled  to  employ  the  first  person  whom  chance  should 
throw  in  his  way. 

Again  ;  the  law  expressly  requires  every  teacher  to  ob- 
tain, from  the  school  committee  of  the  town,  a  certificate 
of  his  qualifications  "  before  he  opens  the  school"  This  im- 
plies, that  it  is  a  violation  of  duty  on  the  part  of  &  teacher 
to  open  a  school  previously  to  obtaining  such  a  certificate ; 
and  also,  on  the  part  of  the  town  committee,  to  examine 
a  teacher  after  he  has  opened  his  school,  for  the  purpose 
of  giving  him  a  retro-active  certificate.  Magistrates  and 
officers  might  as  well  enter  upon  the  discharge  of  their 
duties,  with  the  expectation  of  being  qualified  some  time 
before  or  after  the  close  of  their  official  term.  The  reason 
for  this  prohibition  upon  teachers  and  committees  is  un- 
answerable. After  the  teacher  has  intruded  into  the 
school  without  a  certificate,  other  considerations,  besides 
fitness,  come  in,  and  strenuously  urge,  if  they  do  not 
morally  compel,  the  committee  to  give  him  one.  Just 
before  a  school  begins,  parents  generally  make  arrange- 
ments for  dispensing  with  the  personal  services  of  their 


FIRST    ANNUAL    REPORT.  393 

children.  Some  take  them  away  from  regular  and  profit- 
able employments.  During  the  first  few  weeks  of  a  school, 
the  children  never  study  with  the  same  facility,  nor  arc 
they  able  to  make  the  same  progress,  as  afterwards.  Even 
men  cannot  rally  and  apply  their  whole  mental  forces,  on 
the  first  day  of  commencing  an  unaccustomed  work.  It, 
is  a  subject  of  universal  regret  with  good  teachers  of  short 
schools,  that  as  soon  as  the  school  has  gathered  impetus, 
it  is  arrested.  A  change  of  teachers,  when  a  school  has 
just  opened,  is,  in  itself,  a  great  misfortune  ;  because 
different  persons  have  different  regulations  and  different 
modes  of  administering  them.  In  all  schools,  the  harness 
of  good  order  and  discipline  will  chafe  a  little  at  first,  and 
some  time  must  elapse  before  it  will  sit  easy.  At  the 
opening  of  a  school,  a  teacher  ought  to  learn  the  pro- 
ficiency of  his  scholars,  for  the  purpose  of  arranging 
classes,  and  as  a  basis  of  judicious  advice  in  regard  to  ad- 
vanced studies.  In  the  course  of  two  or  three  weeks,  a 
teacher  of  any  discernment  will  get  an  insight  respecting 
the  peculiar  temperament  and  disposition  of  each  scholar, 
and  he  will  find  avenues,  or  open  them,  by  which  a 
readier  access  can  be  had  to  his  pupils'  minds.  A  school 
will  but  partially  develop  its  powers  of  advancement,  un- 
til teacher  and  pupils  become  acquainted ;  until  the 
standing  relations  between  them  are  established,  and 
their  minds  are  so  mutually  fitted  into  each  other  as  to 
work  without  friction.  Suppose,  at  this  moment,  when  the 
school  ought  to  be  under  strong  headway,  the  teacher  is 
presented  to  the  committee  for  examination  and  approval ; 
and,  in  addition  to  such  considerations  as  those  above 
suggested,  the  prudential  committee  enforces  the  demand 
of  a  certificate  with  the  plea,  that  it  is  now  too  late  in 
the  season  to  obtain  any  better  substitute.  Now,  the 
painful  alternative  may  be  directly  presented,  either  to 


o94  THE  SECEETABY'S 

approve  an  incompetent  teacher,  or  to  reject  him  and 
break  up  the  school :  —  two  modes  about  equally  efficient 
in  ruining  the  school  for  that  season.  Between  these  evils, 
however,  there  is  a  choice  ;  —  a  badly  kept  school  being 
worse  than  none.  Yet  the  first  is  the  branch  of  the  alter- 
native far  the  most  likely  to  be  accepted  ;  because  the 
evil  of  breaking  up  the  school  is  instant  and  impending, 
while  that  of  its  continuance,  though  greater,  is  remote  ; 
and  it  is  a  rule,  lamentably  prevalent  in  the  actions  of 
men,  that  when  a  less  but  immediate  evil  comes  in  com- 
petition with  one  far  greater,  but  more  remote,  the  former 
prevails.  The  malignity  of  the  case  is,  that  it  enlists  all 
the  good  motives  of  the  committee  on  the  bad  side. 

From  facts  which  have  come  to  my  knowledge.  I  am 
constrained  to  believe,  that,  in  two-thirds  at  least  of  the 
towns  in  the  Commonwealth,  this  provision  of  the  law  is 
more  or  less  departed  from.  And  in  the  great  majority 
of  the  cases  where  an  examination  is  had,  previous  to 
the  opening  of  the  school,  it  takes  place  on  the  very  eve 
of  its  commencement,  when  the  evils  above  enumerated 
must  partially  ensue  from  a  rejection  of  the  candidate, 
and,  therefore,  undue  motives  in  favor  of  granting  a  cer- 
tificate must  have  a  proportionate  force. 

Another  evasion  of  much  rarer  occurrence,  though  of 
a  far  more  mischievous  tendency,  is,  that  the  school  is 
kept  for  the  stipulated  period,  and  then  the  prudential 
committee  gives  the  teacher  an  order  on  the  town  treas- 
urer, and  the  town  treasurer  pays  the  money,  without 
any  certificate  ever  having  been  obtained  or  applied  for. 
Indeed,  the  relation  between  the  prudential  and  the  town 
committee,  in  regard  to  the  employment  of  teachers,  con- 
tains in  itself  an  element  of  variance  or  hostility,  which 
is  oftentimes  developed  into  open  rupture,  and  more  often, 
perhaps,  suppressed,  by  injurious  yielding  and  acquies- 


FIRST   ANNUAL    REPORT.  395 

cence  on  the  part  of  the  latter.  So  manifest  is  this  ten- 
dency, and  so  unhappy  its  consequences,  that  very  many 
judicious  men  maintain  the  expediency  of  vesting  the 
whole  power  of  employing  teachers  in  the  town  com- 
mittee. 

Another  duty  of  the  town  committee  is  that  of  direct- 
ing what  books  shall  be  used  in  the  schools.  There  is  a 
public  evil  of  great  magnitude  in  the  multiplicity  and 
diversity  of  elementary  books.  They  crowd  the  market, 
and  infest  the  schools.  One  would  suppose  there  might 
be  uniformity  in  rudiments,  at  least ;  yet  the  greatest  va- 
riety prevails.  Some  books  claim  superiority,  because 
they  make  learning  easy,  and  others  because  they  make 
it  difficult.  All  decry  their  predecessors,  or  profess  to 
have  discovered  new  and  better  modes  of  teaching.  By 
u  change  of  books,  a  child  is  often  obliged  to  unlearn 
what  he  had  laboriously  acquired  before.  In  many  im- 
portant particulars,  the  pronunciation,  the  orthography, 
and  the  syntax  of  our  language  changes,  according  to 
the  authority  consulted.  Truth  and  philosophy,  in  re- 
gard to  teaching,  assume  so  many  shapes,  that  common 
minds  begin  to  doubt  whether  there  be  truth  or  philoso- 
phy under  any.  The  advantages  of  cheapness,  resulting 
from  improvements  in  the  art  of  printing,  are  intercepted 
from  the  public,  to  whom  they  rightfully  belong,  and  di- 
vided among  compilers.  Over  this,  as  an  expensive  pub- 
lic mischief,  as  a  general  discouragement  to  learning,  and 
as  a  misfortune  of  the  Commonwealth,  town  committees 
have  no  control.  But  it  is  still  in  their  power,  and  it  is 
an  important  and  substantial  part  of  their  duty,  as  en- 
joined by  law,  "  to  direct  what  books  shall  be  used  in  the 
several  schools,"  in  their  respective  towns.  When  the 
committee  fail  in  directing  what  books  shall  be  used,  a 
way  is  opened  for  the  introduction  of  books  which  are 


396  THE  SECRETARY'S 

expressly  prohibited  by  law,  as  "  calculated  to  favor  the 
tenets  of  particular  sects  of  Christians."  Under  such 
omission,  also,  the  schoolhouse  may  cease  to  be  neutral 
ground  between  those  different  portions  of  society,  now 
so  vehemently  contending  against  each  other  on  a  variety 
of  questions  of  social  and  national  duty.  Instances  of 
both  kinds  have  occurred,  and  were,  under  such  circum- 
stances, to  be  expected  ;  because  it  is  the  nature  of  ex- 
treme views  to  make  all  other  truths  bow  down  before 
the  idolized  truth.  But  the  liability  and  the  temptation 
should  be  cut  off.  Would  the  disciples  of  hostile  doc- 
trines look  forward,  and  foresee  to  what  results  a  breach 
of  the  truce  in  regard  to  the  schoolroom  must  infallibly 
lead,  it  seems  scarcely  credible  that  each  should  not 
agree,  in  good  faith,  to  refrain  from  every  attempt  to  pre- 
occupy the  minds  of  school  children  with  his  side  of 
vexed  and  complicated  questions,  whether  of  state,  or 
theology  ;  and  that  all  should  not  concur,  in  regard  to  an 
evil  so  self-propagating  and  ruinous,  in  enforcing  meas- 
ures which  would  bar  out  the  possibility  of  its  occur- 
rence. The  only  reason  urged  by  school  committees  for 
a  non-compliance  with  the  provision  of  law  in  relation 
to  selecting  books,  is,  that  parents  object  to  the  expense 
of  purchasing  so  many  new  books  as  would  give  uniform 
sets  to  the  school.  Hence  the  evil  is  endued  with  a  self- 
perpetuating  power  ;  because,  as  it  increases,  the  obsta- 
cle to  its  removal  increases  also.  Where  a  diversity  of 
books  prevails  in  a  school,  there  will  necessarily  be  unut- 
nessandmal-adjustment  in  the  classification  of  scholars. 
Those  who  ought  to  recite  together  are  separated  by  a 
difference  of  books.  If  eight  or  ten  scholars,  in  geogra- 
phy, for  instance,  have  eight  or  ten  different  books,  as  has 
sometimes  happened,  instead  of  one  recitation  for  all, 
there  must  be  eight  or  ten  recitations.  Thus  the  teach- 


FIRST  ANNUAL   REPORT.  397 

er's  time  is  crumbled  into  dust  and  dissipated.  Put  a 
question  to  a  class  of  ten  scholars,  and  wait  a  moment 
for  each  one  to  prepare  an  answer  in  his  own  mind,  and 
then  name  the  one  to  give  the  answer,  and  there  are  ten 
mental  operations  going  on  simultaneously ;  and  each 
one  of  the  ten  scholars  will  profit  more  by  this  social  re- 
citation than  he  would  by  av  solitary  one  of  the  same 
length.  But  if  there  must  be  ten  recitations,  instead  of 
one,  the  teacher  is,  as  it  were,  divided  by  ten,  and  re- 
duced to  the  tenth  part  of  a  teacher.  Nine-tenths  of  his 
usefulness  is  destroyed.  The  same  would  be  true  in  re- 
gard to  most  other  studies.  This  irretrievable  loss  is 
incurred,  merely  because  parents  will  not  agree  to  pro- 
cure the  best  books. 

It  would  seem,  beforehand,  that  no  duty  of  school  com- 
mittees could  be  more  acceptable  to  parents,  than  that 
of  enforcing  a  uniformity  of  books  in  all  the  schools  of  a 
town.  Every  school,  where  there  are  no  regulations  upon 
this  subject,  holds  out  a  standing  invitation  to  every  book- 
peddler  and  speculator,  to  foist  in  his  books,  which 
may  be  new,  or  they  be  books  whose  sheets  may  have 
been  printed  for  years,  but  garnished  with  a  new  title- 
page  bearing  a  recent  date.  The  diversity  may  be  ag- 
gravated through  the  intervention  of  the  teacher,  who 
often  desires  to  introduce  the  books  from  which  he,  him- 
self, learnt,  or  has  been  accustomed  to  teach.  But  if  the 
books  are  prescribed,  all  applications  for  a  change  must 
be  made  directly  to  the  committee,  and  imposition  be- 
comes impracticable,  or,  at  least,  the  chances  of  it  are 
very  much  reduced.  While  the  diversity  continues,  each 
succeeding  teacher  will  urge  the  children  to  procure  his 
favorite  books  ;  the  .children  will  importune  their  parents, 
and  enough  of  them  will  prevail  to  perpetuate  the  mis- 
chief. There  cannot  be  a  doubt,  that  the  aggregate  ex- 


398  THE  SECRETARY'S 

pense  of  books,  for  any  given  number  of  years,  will  be 
much  greater  in  towns  where  the  committee  are  thwarted 
by  the  parents  in  the  discharge  of  this  duty,  than  in 
towns  where  it  is  duly  performed.  In  this,  as  in  any 
other  operation  or  business  whatever,  the  absence  of  sys- 
tem and  pre-arrangement  doubles  cost  and  halves  profits. 
Families  can  rarely  remove  from  one  town  to  another, 
and,  very  often,  they  cannot,  even  from  one  district  to 
another  in  the  same  town,  without  incurring  the  expense 
of  a  new  set  of  books  for  their  children.  This  bears,  in 
every  respect,  most  hardly  upon  the  poor. 

Notwithstanding  the  manifest  advantages  of  a  perform- 
ance of  this  branch  of  duty,  and  the  grievous  mischiefs 
resulting  from  its  neglect,  it  is  neglected  in  about  one 
hundred  torvns,  or  one-third  part  of  the  towns  in  the 
Commonwealth. 

The  law  further  provides,  that,  in  case  any  scholar  shall 
not  be  furnished  by  his  parent,  master,  or  guardian,  with 
the  requisite  books,  "  he  shall  be  supplied  therewith  at 
the  expense  of  the  town."  Few  things. seem  more  pre- 
posterous than  to  send  children  to  school,  or  to  keep  them 
there,  for  the  purpose  of  not  studying.  Half  a  dozen 
children,  stationed  in  different  parts  of  a  school,  with 
nothing  to  do  for  want  of  books,  will  soon  enlist  three 
times  their  number  in  the  same  service.  In  not  less 
than  forty  towns  is  this  duty  wholly  omitted.  Children 
attend  school,  surrounded  by  temptations  to  mischief, 
and  without  any  means  of  occupation. 

An  inquiry  into  the  "  regulation  and  discipline  "  of  the 
schools  is  another  of  the  duties  enjoined  upon  the  town 
committee  ;  and  so  important  is  this  duty,  in  the  judg- 
ment of  the  law,  that  its  performance  is  commanded,  not 
only  at  the  opening  and  close  of  the  schools,  but  at  each 
of  the  monthly  visitations.  Under  this  head,  many  points 


FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT.  399 

are  embraced,  vital  to  the  cause  of  Common-School  edu- 
cation. I  will  give  but  a  single  example.  The  "  regula- 
tion "  of  a  school  comprises  the  means  of  insuring  as 
much  punctuality  and  regularity  as  possible  in  the  at- 
tendance of  all  the  children  in  the  district.  Absences 
and  tardiness  are  great  obstructions  to  progress.  The 
punctual  are  injured  by  them  hardly  less  than  the  delin- 
quent. In  some  towns,  the  excellent  practice  of  keeping 
daily  registers  by  the  teachers,  to  be  exhibited  to  the 
committee  at  each  visitation,  of  holding  the  scholars  to 
a  strict  account  for  all  absences,  and  of  discouraging  de- 
sertion from  the  school  by  all  other  practicable  means,  has 
obviated  almost  all  delinquencies  of  this  kind.  In  other 
towns,  where  the  attendance  upon  school  is  prompted  by 
no  motive,  nor  enforced  by  any  salutary  regulation, 
habits  of  idleness  and  truantship  in  the  present  children 
are  laying  the  foundations  of  vagrancy,  poverty,  and  vice 
in  the  future  men. 

In  connection  with  this  topic  of  the  "  regulation  "  of 
a  school,  as  one  of  the  means  of  securing  punctuality  in 
the  attendance  of  scholars,  it  is  material  to  advert  to 
another  provision  of  the  law,  which  makes  it  the  joint 
and  several  duty  of  school  committees,  resident  ministers 
of  the  gospel,  and  selectmen,  "  in  their  several  towns,  to 
exert  their  influence  and  use  their  best  endeavors,  that 
the  youth  of  their  towns  shall  regularly  attend  the  schools 
established  for  their  instruction."  The  success  attendant 
upon  the  exertions  of  these  officers,  to  secure  a  "  regular  " 
attendance  upon  schools,  will  appear  by  the  following 
statement :  — 

The  whole  number  of  children,  in  the  294  towns  which  have  made 

returns,  who  are  between  four  and  sixteen  years  of  age,  is  177,053 

If  from  this  number  we  deduct  twelve  thousand,  as  the  number 
of  children  who  attend  private  schools  and  academies,  and  do 
not  attend  the  public  schools  at  all,  there  will  remain  165,053 


400  THE  SECRETARY'S 

Whole  number  of  scholars  of  all  ages,  attending  school  in  winter  141,837 

Whole  number  of  scholars  of  all  ages,  attending  school  in  summer  1 22,889 

The  average  attendance  in  winter  is  111  ,520 

Do.            Do.          in  summer  is  94,956 
So  that  the  average  attendance,  in  winter,  of  children  of  all  ages, 
falls  below  the  whole  number  of  children  in  the  State  between 
4  and  1 G  years  of  age,  who  depend  wholly  upon  the  Common 

Schools  53,533 

And  in  summer  it  falls  below  that  number  70,097 

That  is,  a  portion  of  the  children,  dependent  wholly 
upon  the  Common  Schools,  absent  themselves  from  the 
winter  school,  either  permanently  or  occasionally,  equal 
to  a  permanent  absence  of  about  one-third  of  their  whole 
number ;  and  a  portion  absent  themselves  from  the  sum- 
mer schools,  either  permanently  or  occasionally,  equal  to 
a  permanent  absence  of  considerably  more  than  two-fifths 
of  their  whole  number. 

The  average  length  of  all  the  schools  in  the  two  hun- 
dred and  ninety-four  towns  heard  from  is  six  mouths 
and  twenty-five  days  each,  for  the  whole  year.  Were  the 
winter  and  summer  terms  equal  in  length,  this  average 
would  give  three  months  and  twelve  days  and  a  half  to 
each.  But,  on  account  of  the  voluntary  absences  from 
school,  the  winter  term  is  reduced  to  the  scholars,  on  an 
average,  to  about  two  months  and  one  week,  and  the 
summer  term  to  two  months  and  an  inconsiderable  frac- 
tion ;  or,  taking  both  winter  and  summer  terms,  to  about 
four  months  and  one  week  in  the  year.  And  so  much  as 
some  scholars,  dependent  upon  the  Common  School,  actu- 
ally attend  school  more,  just  so  much  do  others  actually 
attend  less. 

Were  it  certain  that  the  number,  one  hundred  and 
seventy-seven  thousand  and  fifty-three,  was  not  an  over- 
estimate of  the  children  between  four  and  sixteen  years 
of  age,  and  did  the  returns  embrace  all  the  children  of 


FIRST   ANNUAL    REPORT.  401 

all  ages  attending  in  all  the  public  schools,  it  would  appear 
that  forty-two  thousand  one  hundred  and  sixty-four  chil- 
dren, wholly  dependent  upon  the  Common  Schools,  have 
not,  the  past  year,  attended  school  at  all  in  the  summer ; 
and  twenty-three  thousand  two  hundred  and  sixteen, 
neither  in  summer  nor  winter.  There  is  some  reason  to 
believe,  that  from  omissions  in  the  returns,  and,  perhaps, 
from  other  causes,  the  total  of  the  children  of  all  ages, 
attending  all  the  schools,  is  rather  too  low.  After  mak- 
ing every  possible  allowance,  however,  the  returns  exhibit 
frightful  evidence  of  the  number  of  children,  who  either 
do  not  go  to  school  at  all,  or  go  so  little  as  not  to  be 
reckoned  among  the  scholars. 

In  this  State,  where  the  traditional  habits  and  usages 
of  the  people  exact  some  term  of  apprenticeship  for  all 
arts  —  except  for  the  most  difficult  of  all,  the  art  of  teach- 
ing—  an  intelligent  and  assiduous  committee  can  do 
much,  by  way  of  counsel  and  sympathy,  to  encourage 
teachers,  if  not  to  capacitate  them  for  the  discharge  of 
their  delicate  and  arduous  work.  No  person,  fitted  by 
Nature  even  for  a  temporary  guardianship  of  the  young, 
if  not  specially  taught  and  skilled  for  his  office,  can  re- 
main in  school  a  single  week,  without  a  deep  conscious- 
ness of  incapacity  for  interesting,  guiding,  and  elevating 
the  beings  intrusted  to  his  tutelage.  In  this  condition 
of  things,  the  committee  are  his  only  resource ;  and,  if 
they  also  are  incompetent  to  counsel  and  enlighten,  acci- 
dent and  darkness  must  preside  over  the  education  of 
our  youth. 

Another  important  duty  enjoined  upon  school  commit- 
tees is  the  visitation  of  the  schools.  Such  visitations  may 
be  a  moral  incitement  to  the  scholars,  of  great  efficacy. 
Advice,  encouragement,  affectionate  persuasion,  coming 
from  such  of  their  townsmen  as  the  children  have  been 


402  THE  SECRETARY'S 

accustomed  to  regard  with  respect  or  veneration,  will  sink 
deep  and  remain  long  in  their  hearts.  Wise  counsel 
from  acknowledged  superiors  makes  a  deep  impress.  It 
comes  with  the  momentum  of  a  heavy  body,  falling  from 
a  great  height.  The  same  counsel,  if  the  same  could  be 
had,  from  men  whom  the  children  hold  in  no  respect  or 
esteem,  might  be  remembered  only  to  be  ridiculed.  The 
visitations  of  the  committee  break  in  upon  the  monotony 
of  the  school.  They  spur  the  slothful,  and  reward  the 
emulous  and  aspiring.  To  suppose  that  the  children  in 
a  school  will  ever  feel  a  keen,  impulsive  interest  in  learn- 
ing, while  parents  and  neighbors  are  disregarded  of  it,  is 
to  suppose  the  children  to  be  wiser  than  the  men.  The 
stimulus  of  acting  under  the  public  eye,  though  an  infe- 
rior motive,  is  still  an  allowable  one  amongst  adults.  To 
the  mind  of  the  sworn  officer,  is  it  not  more  pleasant  than 
his  oath  ?  Do  not  much  of  the  uprightness  and  thorough- 
ness brought  to  the  discharge  of  public  duties  depend 
upon  their  being  performed  under  public  inspection? 
And  why,  in  regard  to  children,  may  we  not  avail  our- 
selves of  this  innate  sentiment  as  an  auxiliary  in  the  at- 
tainment of  knowledge  ;  always  holding  it  subordinate  to 
the  supreme  sentiment  of  duty  ?  I  have  heard  hundreds 
of  teachers,  with  one  voice,  attest  its  utility.  Such  visi- 
tations by  the  committee  are  not  less  useful  to  teachers 
than  tp  pupils.  While  all  due  respect  should  be  accorded 
to  teachers  —  and  certainly  no  class  in  the  community 
are  more  deserving  both  of  emolument  and  of  social  con- 
sideration than  they  —  yet,  as  our  school-system  is  now 
administered,  we  are  not  authorized  to  anticipate  any 
more  fidelity  and  strenuousness  in  the  fulfilment  of  duty 
from  them  than  from  the  same  number  of  persons  en- 
gaged in  any  reputable  employment.  This  State  employs, 
annually,  in  the  Common  Schools,  more  than  three  thou- 


FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT.  403 

sand  teachers,  at  au  expense  of  more  than  four  liundred 
and  sixty-five  thousand  dollars,  raised  by  direct  taxation. 
But  they  have  not  one-thousandth  part  of  the  supervision 
which  watches  the  same  number  of  persons,  having  the 
care  of  cattle  or  spindles,  or  of  the  retail  of  shop-goods. 
Who  would  retain  his  reputation,  not  for  prudence,  but 
for  sanity,  if  he  employed  men  on  his  farm,  or  in  his  fac- 
tory, or  clerks  in  his  counting-room,  month  after  month, 
without  oversight  and  even  without  inquiry  ?  In  regard 
to  what  other  service  are  we  so  indifferent,  where  the  re- 
muneration swells  to  such  an  aggregate  ? 

Being  deeply  impressed  with  these  views,  I  inserted  in 
the  circular  an  interrogatory  upon  this  subject;  and  wher- 
ever I  have  been,  I  have  made  constant  inquiries  whether 
this  duty  of  visitation  were  performed,  agreeably  to  law. 
I  have  heard  from  nearly  all  the  towns  in  the  State.  The 
result  is,  that  not  in  more  than  fifty  or  sixty  towns,  out  of 
the  three  hundred  and  five,  has  there  been  any  pretence 
of  a  compliance  with  the  law  ;  and  in  regard  to  some  of 
these  towns,  after  a  reference  to  the  requisitions  of  the 
statute,  the  allegation  of  a  compliance  has  been  with- 
drawn, as  having  been  made  in  ignorance1  of  the  extent 
of  its  provisons. 

It  would  be  unjust  to  attribute  the  omission  even  of  this 
important  duty  to  any  peculiar  deadness  or  dormancy,  on 
the  part  of  committees,  towards  the  great  interest  of  our 
Common  Schools.  No  body  of  men  in  the  community 
have  performed  services  for  the  public,  at  all  comparable  to 
theirs,  for  so  little  of  the  common  inducements  of  honor 
and  emolument.  In  not  more  than  about  one-fifth  part  of 
the  towns  do  the  committee  receive  either  compensation 
or  re-imbursement  for  devoting  from  six  to  sixty  days  of 
time  to  the  duties  of  their  office,  and  for  incurring  ex- 
penses of  horse  and  carriage  hire,  amounting  to  ten  or 


404  THE  SECRETARY'S 

twenty,  ana  sometimes  even  to  thirty  dollars  per  annum. 
Where  any  thing  is  given,  it  rarely  exceeds  a  quarter  of 
the  lowest  wages  of  day  labor.  The  towns  paying  most 
liberally,  I  believe,  are  Falmouth  and  Sandwich,  in  the 
county  of  Barnstable,  where  one  dollar  a  day,  and  six- 
pence a  mile  for  travel,  are  given.  In  a  very  few  other 
towns,  the  compensation  is  fixed  at  seventy-five  cents  for 
each  visit  (understood  to  occupy  a  full  half-day)  ;  in  a  few 
more,  fifty  cents  a  visit  is  paid  ;  but  in  most  other  cases,  it  is 
a  small  fixed  sum  to  be  given  to  the  chairman  or  the 
secretary  of  the  committee,  or  to  be  divided  between  the 
members  of  the  Board ;  —  as  in  Lincoln,  ten  dollars  to 
chairman  ;  in  HaverMll  and  Iling-ham,  ten  dollars  to  the 
clerk  or  secretary  ;  in  East  Hampton,  eight  dollars  for  the 
whole  Board  ;  in  Cummington  and  Wareham,  five  dollars 
for  each  member ;  in  Franklin,  three  dollars  for  each  ;  in 
William sburg-,  once,  nine  dollars  for  all,  and  so  forth. 
To  the  inquiry,  Whether  paid  or  not  ?  the  letter  of  the 
answer  in  some  cases,  and,  in  many  others,  the  spirit  of 
it,  has  been,  "  Neither  paid  nor  thanked."  In  many 
cases,  where  gentlemen  have  served  gratuitously  in  the 
office  for  several  years,  and  have  then  presented  a  bill  for 
expenses  merely,  they  have  been  dropped  from  the  board 
for  the  ensuing  year :  in  others,  where,  after  having  served 
for  years  in  succession,  and,  having  been  re-elected,  they 
have  offered  to  accept,  on  condition  of  receiving  half  as 
much  as  was  allowed  for  working  upon  the  highways,  as 
a  means  of  defraying  their  expenses,  the  offer  has  been 
rejected  by  a  vote  of  the  town,  and  the  vacancy  more 
cheaply  filled.  Neither  does  there  seem  to  be  any  social 
consideration  attached  to  the  station.  While  the  office 
of  selectman  and  of  representative  to  the  general  court 
is  often  an  object  of  avidity,  the  more  useful,  responsible, 
and  intrinsically  honorable  office  of  school-committee- 


FIRST  ANNUAL   REPORT.  405 

man  is  shunned  as  thankless  and  burdensome.  It  is  not 
to  be  disguised,  that,  in  many  places,  it  encounters  oppo- 
sition and  reproach,  just  in  proportion  to  the  fidelity  with 
which  its  obligations  are  observed.  In  many  of  the  prin- 
cipal towns  in  the  Commonwealth,  committee-men  have 
been  chosen,  year  after  year,  by  not  more  than  ten  or 
twenty  votes ;  and,  upon  their  declining,  the  vacancies 
have  been  filled  by  as  small  a  number.  In  one  town,  con- 
taining three  hundred  voters,  they  were  once  chosen  by 
three  votes.  In  many  places  it  is  strikingly  observable, 
that  persons  desirous  of  certain  other  offices  are  especially 
wary  of  this.  In  others,  again,  it  has  been  necessary  to 
resort  to  the  expedient  of  electing  persons  not  present  at 
the  meeting,  in  order  that  the  office  might  be  nominally 
filled.  Other  towns,  again,  have  chosen  them,  in  order 
to  avoid  the  penalty  of  the  law,  and  to  obtain  their  dis- 
tributive share  of  the  school-fund,  with  an  express  under- 
standing that  they  should  discharge  none  of  their  duties, 
except  making  their  return  to  the  Secretary  of  State. 

Dormancy  and  deadness,  therefore,  in  regard  to  this 
plastic  institution,  now  moulding  and  fashioning  the 
beings  upon  whom  all  the  interests  of  society  are  so  soon 
to  devolve,  seem  chargeable  upon  the  people,  who  not  only 
deny  all  remuneration  for  the  loss  of  time,  and  even  all 
re-irnbursement  for  expenses  incurred,  but  many  of  whom 
thwart  and  baffle  the  due  administration  of  the  office,  and 
render  the  duties  they  impose  onerous  and  unwelcome. 
Hence  it  often  happens,  that  the  citizens,  best  qualified 
for  the  station,  decline  its  acceptance  ;  or,  having  ac- 
cepted it,  they  abridge  its  labors,  and  thereby  curtail  its 
usefulness.  Clergymen  allege,  that  their  relation  to  the 
schools  has  been  modified  by  recent  legislation.  Their 
parishes  were  once  territorial,  now  they  are  poll ;  and  thus 
the  special  relation  they  once  sustained  to  all  the  schools 


406  THE  SECRETARY'S 

within  their  territory  is  dissolved.  Once  they  owed  a 
special  debt  to  society  for  their  immunity  from  taxation  ; 
now  that  obligation  is  cancelled.  From  this  or  some 
other  cause  it  has  happened,  that  a  public  school,  kept 
the  whole  twelve  months,  in  a  place  where  several  clergy- 
men were  constantly  resident,  has  never  been  visited  by 
any  of  them  for  a  succession  of  years.  Public  men  and 
professional  men  decline  the  service  on  account  of  their 
various  engagements.  The  industrious  aver,  that  "  time 
is  money ;  "  thus  alleging  a  maxim,  designed  only  to  en- 
force a  lower  duty,  as  a  justification  for  disregarding  a 
higher-;  and  forgetting  that  it  is  no  more  true  that  "  time 
is  money  "  than  it  is  that  "  time  is  knowledge,  or  wisdom, 
or  virtue,"  because  it  may  be  converted  into  the  latter,  as 
easily  and  certainly  as  into  the  former.  But,  I  repeat, 
the  fault  is  in  the  system,  more  than  in  the  individuals. 
At  every  convention  I  have  attended,  from  every  intelli- 
gent individual  with  whom  I  have  conversed,  no  opinion 
has  been  so  universal  and  emphatic,  as  that  our  institu- 
tion of  Common  Schools  will  continue  to  languish  and 
cannot  be  revived,  until  wise  boards  of  school-committee- 
men  shall,  themselves,  be  a  living  exposition  of  the  law  ; 
and  shall  make  all  its  provisions  in  regard  to  the  "  exam- 
ination of  teachers,"  the  "  selection  "  and  "  supply  "  of 
books,  the  "  visitation  "  and  "the  regulation  and  disci- 
pline of  the  schools,"  and  "  the  habits  and  proficiency 
of  the  scholars,"  as  legible  in  their  actions  as  on  the 
pages  of  the  statute-book. 

The  law  exacts  a  performance  of  duty  from  other 
municipal  officers,  under  the  sanction  of  a  penalty ;  be- 
cause, as  they  receive  something  by  way  of  fee  or  per 
diem  allowance,  they  may  well  be  held  amenable  for  any 
official  delinquency.  But  the  trainers  of  the  law  pre- 
scribing the  duties  of  committee-men  must  have  felt  the 


FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT.  407 

flagrant  injustice  of  denouncing  any  penalty  for  derelic- 
tions, when  the  demands  upon  time  and  money  were  so 
ample,  and  the  requital  nothing.  Hence  an  entire  aban- 
donment of  duty  involves  no  forfeiture,  and  subjects  to 
no  animadversion.  Such  abandonment  has  occurred,  and 
been  tolerated  and  acquiesced  in,  if  not  demanded,  by 
public  sentiment.  At  one  convention  it  was  stated, 
openly  and  without  contradiction,  by  a  gentleman  of  high 
respectability,  in  the  presence  of  his  colleagues  and 
others,  who  must  have  known  the  case,  that  in  his  town, 
containing  about  forty  school  districts,  the  school-com- 
mittee, for  eight  or  more  successive  years,  had  never  ex- 
amined a  teacher,  nor  visited  a  school.  During  this  long 
intermission  of  duty,  the  children  in  the  public  schools 
passed  through  two-thirds  of  the  whole  of  their  school- 
going  life.  Many  other  cases  have  come  to  my  knowl- 
edge, calculated  to  excite  the  deepest  alarm  in  every 
mind  which  sees  the  character  of  the  next  generation  of 
men  foreshadowed  and  prophesied  in  the  direction  which 
is  given  to  the  children  of  this. 

I  feel  it  my  duty,  therefore,  to  submit  to  the  Board  of 
Education  the  expediency  of  recommending  to  the  gen- 
eral court,  the  appropriation  of  some  portion  of  the  in- 
come of  the  school-fund,  when  divided  among  the  towns, 
as  a  compensation  to  school-committees. for  the  discharge 
of  duties  so  laborious  and  influential.  Were  this  done, 
there  would  then  be  justice  and  propriety,  certainly  in 
cases  of  gross  delinquency,  in  subjecting  them  to  legal 
animadversion,  or  withholding  from  their  respective 
towns  their  share  of  the  annual  apportionment.  This 
course  would  relieve  the  towns  from  the  burden  of  taxing 
themselves  to  pay  the  committee.  The  single  fact  of 
being  obliged  to  render  a  written  account  to  the  town,  of 
their  services,  at  the  end  of  each  year,  would  prompt  to 


408  THE  SECRETARY'S 

punctuality  and  fidelity,  and  create  another  impulse  to 
duty.  It  may  be  said,  that,  in  some  towns,  the  money 
would  be  paid  without  much  valuable  consideration  in 
services  rendered  :  but  this,  it  is  believed,  would  happen 
in  but  few  cases,  even  at  first,  and  would  not  be  lastingly 
true  anywhere.  Such  a  provision  might  require  some 
slight  modification  in  the  constitution  of  the  board  of 
town  committees.  Indeed,  is  it  not  worthy  of  considera- 
tion, whether  some  plan  may  not  be  adopted  in  distrib- 
uting the  income  of  the  school-fund,  which  would  assist 
towns  or  districts  in  purchasing  apparatus  or  school 
libraries,  or  in  doing  some  other  thing  for  the  benefit  of 
the  schools,  which  they  cannot  conveniently,  or  will  not 
ordinarily,  do  without  such  assistance  ?  The  fund  would 
then  be  a  stimulant  instead  of  an  opiate. 

Could  the  complement  of  service  be  secured  from  com- 
mittees as  well  without  compensation  as  with  it,  undoubt- 
edly such  unbought  efforts  would  infuse  into  the  system 
a  quicker  life  and  a  higher  energy ;  because  work  is 
always  better  done,  just  in  proportion  as  it  is  done  from 
a  higher  motive.  But  in  this  case,  I  am  satisfied,  that 
the  only  alternative  presented  us  is,  between  a  groping 
and  dilatory  performance,  on  the  one  hand,  and  such 
faithful,  though  not  wholly  disinterested  efforts,  on  the 
other,  as  may  be  commanded  for  a  moderate  requital. 

It  is  obvious,  that  neglectful  school-committees,  in- 
competent teachers,  and  an  indifferent  public,  may  go  on 
degrading  each  other,  until  the  noble  system  of  free 
schools  shall  be  abandoned  by  a  people,  so  self-abased  as 
to  be  unconscious  of  their  abasement. 

Thirdly.  Another  topic,  in  some  respects  kindred  to 
the  last,  is  the  apathy  of  the  people  themselves  towards 
our  Common  Schools.  The  wide  usefulness  of  which 
this  institution  is  capable  is  shorn  away  on  both  sides, 


FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT.  409 

by  two  causes  diametrically  opposite.  On  one  side,  there 
is  a  portion  of  the  community,  who  do  not  attach  suffi- 
cient value  to  the  system  to  do  the  things  necessary  to  its 
healthful  and  energetic  working.  They  may  say  excellent 
things  about  it,  they  may  have  a  conviction  of  its  general 
utility  ;  but  they  do  not  understand,  that  the  wisest  con- 
versation not  embodied  in  action,  that  convictions  too 
gentle  and  quiet  to  coerce  performance,  are  little  better 
than  worthless.  The  prosperity  of  the  system  always  re- 
quires some  labor.  It  requires  a  conciliatory  disposition, 
and  oftentimes  a  little  sacrifice  of  personal  preferences. 
A  disagreement  about  the  location  of  a  schoolhouse,  for 
instance,  may  occasion  the  division  of  a  district,  and  thus 
inflict  permanent  impotency  upon  each  of  its  parts.  In 
such  cases,  .a  spirit  of  forbearance  and  compromise,  avert- 
ing the  evil,  would  double  the  common  fund  of  knowl- 
edge for  every  child  in  the  territory.  Except  in  those 
cases  where  it  is  made  necessary  by  the  number  of  the 
scholars,  the  dismemberment  of  a  district,  though  it  may 
leave  the  body,  drains  out  its  life-blood.  So,  through 
remissness  or  ignorance  on  the  part  of  parent  and 
teacher,  the  minds  of  children  may  never  be  awakened 
to  a  consciousness  of  having,  within  themselves,  blessed 
treasures  of  innate  and  noble  faculties,  far  richer  than 
any  outward  possessions  can  be ;  they  may  never  be  sup- 
plied with  any  foretaste  of  the  enduring  satisfactions  of 
knowledge ;  and  hence,  they  may  attend  school  for  the 
allotted  period,  merely  as  so  many  male  and  female  au- 
tomata, between  four  and  sixteen  years  of  age.  As  the 
progenitor  of  the  human  race,  after  being  perfectly  fash- 
ioned in  every  limb  and  organ  and  feature,  might  have 
lain  till  this  time,  a  motionless  body  in  the  midst  of  the 
beautiful  garden  of  Eden,  had  not  the  Creator  breathed 
into  him  a  living  soul :  so  children,  without  ?ome  favoring 


410  THE  SECRETARY'S 

influences  to  woo  out  and  cheer  their  faculties,  may 
remain  mere  inanimate  forms,  while  surrounded  by  the 
paradise  of  knowledge.  It  is  generally  believed,  that 
there  is  an  increasing  class  of  people  amongst  us,  who 
are  losing  sight  of  the  necessity  of  securing  ample  op- 
portunities for  the  education  of  their  children.  And 
thus,  on  one  side,  the  institution  of  Common  Schools  is 
losing  its  natural  support,  if  it  be  not  incurring  actual 
opposition. 

Opposite  to  this  class,  who  tolerate,  from  apathy,  a  de- 
pression in  the  Common  Schools,  there  is  another  class, 
who  affix  so  high  a  value  upon  the  culture  of  their  chil- 
dren, and  understand  so  well  the  necessity  of  a  skilful 
preparation  of  means  for  its  bestowment,  that  they  turn 
away  from  the  Common  Schools,  in  their  depressed  state, 
and  seek,  elsewhere,  the  helps  of  a  more  enlarged  and 
thorough  education.  Thus  the  standard,  in  descending 
to  a  point  corresponding  with  the  views  and  wants  of  one 
portion  of  society,  falls  below  the  demands  and  the  re- 
gards of  another.  Out  of  different  feelings  grow  dif- 
ferent plans ;  and  while  one  remains  fully  content  with 
the  Common  School,  the  other  builds  up  the  private 
school  or  the  academy.  The  education  fund  is  thus 
divided  into  two  parts.  Neither  of  the  halves  does  a 
quarter  of  the  good  which  might  be  accomplished  by  a 
union  of  the  whole.  One  party  pays  an  adequate  price, 
but  has  a  poor  school ;  the  other  has  a  good  school,  but 
at  more  than  fourfold  cost.  Were  their  funds  and 
their  interest  combined,  the  poorer  school  might  be  as 
good  as  the  best,  and  the  dearest  almost  as  low  as  the 
cheapest.  This  last-mentioned  class  embraces  a  consid- 
erable portion,  perhaps  a  majority,  of  the  wealthy  persons 
in  the  State ;  but  it  also  includes  another  portion, 
numerically  much  greater,  who,  whether  rich  or  poor, 


FIRST   ANNUAL    REPORT.  411 

have  a  true  perception  of  the  sources  of  their  children's 
individual  and  domestic  well-being,  and  who  consider  the 
common  necessaries  of  their  life,  their  food  and  fuel  and 
clothes,  and  all  their  bodily  comforts,  as  superfluities, 
compared  with  the  paramount  necessity  of  a  proper  men- 
tal and  moral  culture  of  their  offspring. 

The  maintenance  of  free  schools  rests  wholly  upon  the 
.social  principle.  It  is  emphatically  a  case  where  men, 
individually  powerless,  are  collectively  strong.  The 
population  of  Massachusetts,  being  more  than  eighty 
to  the  square  mile,  gives  it  the  power  of  maintaining 
Common  Schools.  Take  the  whole  range  of  the  western 
and  south-western  States,  and  their  population,  probably, 
does  not  exceed  a  dozen  or  fifteen  to  the  square  mile. 
Hence,  except  in  favorable  localities,  Common  Schools 
are  impossible  ;  as  the  population  upon  a  territory  of  con- 
venient size  for  a  district  is  too  small  to  sustain  a  school. 
Here,  nothing  is  easier.  But  by  dividing  our  funds,  we 
cast  away  our  natural  advantages.  We  voluntarily  re- 
duce ourselves  to  the  feebleness  of  a  State,  having  but 
half  our  density  of  population. 

It  is  generally  supposed,  that  this  severance  of  interests, 
and  consequent  diminution  of  power,  have  increased 
much  of  late,  and  are  now  increasing  in  an  accelerated 
ratio.  This  is  probable,  for  it  is  a  self-aggravating  evil. 
Its  origin  and  progress  are  simple  and  uniform.  Some 
few  persons  in  a  village  or  town,  finding  the  advantages 
of  the  Common  School  inadequate  to  their  wants,  unite 
to  establish  a  private  one.  They  transfer  their  children 
from  the  former  to  the  latter.  The  heart  goes  with  the 
treasure.  The  Common  School  ceases  to  be  visited  by 
those  whose  children  are  in  the  private.  Such  parents 
decline  serving  as  committee-men.  They  have  now  no 
personal  motive  to  vote  for,  or  advocate,  any  increase  of 


412  THE  SECRETARY'S 

the  town's  annual  appropriation  for  schools  ;  to  say  noth- 
ing of  the  temptation  to  discourage  such  increase  in  in- 
direct ways,  or  even  to  vote  directly  against  it.  If,  by 
this  means,  some  of  the  best  scholars  happen  to  be  taken 
from  the  Common  School,  the  standard  of  that  school  is 
lowered.  The  lower  classes  in  a  school  have  no  abstract 
standard  of  excellence,  and  seldom  aim  at  higher  attain- 
ments than  such  as  they  daily  witness.  All  children,  like 
all  men,  rise  easily  to  the  common  level.  There  the  mass 
stop ;  strong  minds  only  ascend  higher.  But  raise  the 
standard,  and,  by  a  spontaneous  movement,  the  mass  will 
rise  again,  and  reach  it.  Hence  the  removal  of  the  most 
forward  scholars  from  a  school  is  not  a  small  misfortune. 
Again :  the  teacher  of  the  Common  School  rarely  visits 
or  associates,  except  where  the  scholars  of  his  own  school 
are  the  origin  of  the  acquaintance,  and  the  bond  of  at- 
tachment. All  this  inevitably  depresses  and  degrades  the 
Common  School.  In  this  depressed  and  degraded  state, 
another  portion  of  the  parents  find  it,  in  fitness  and  ade- 
quacy, inferior  to  their  wants ;  and,  as  there  is  now  a 
private  school  in  the  neighborhood,  the  strength  of  the 
inducement,  and  the  facility  of  the  transfer,  overbalance 
the  objection  of  increased  expense,  and  the  doors  of  the 
Common  School  close,  at  once,  upon  their  children,  and 
upon  their  interest  in  its  welfare.  Thus  another  blow  is 
dealt ;  then  others  escape  ;  action  and  re-action  alternate, 
until  the  Common  School  is  left  to  the  management  of 
those,  who  have  not  the  desire  or  the  power,  either  to  im- 
prove it  or  to  command  a  better.  Under  this  silent,  but 
rapid  corrosion,  it  recently  happened,  in  one  of  the  most 
flourishing  towns  of  the  State,  having  a  population  of  more 
than  three  thousand  persons,  that  the  principal  district 
school  actually  ran  down  and  was  not  kept  for  two  years. 
I  have  been  repeatedly  assured,  where  every  bias  of  my 


FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT.  413 

informants  would  lead  them  to  extenuate  and  not  to  mag- 
nify the  facts,  that,  in  populous  villages  and  central  dis- 
tricts, where  there  is  naturally  a  concentration  of  wealth 
and  intelligence,  and  a  juster  appreciation  of  the  blessings 
of  a  good  education,  and  where,  therefore,  the  Common 
School  ought  to  be  the  best  in  the  town,  it  was  the  poor- 
est. 

Believing  that  this  subject  bears  very  nearly  the  same 
relation  to  the  healthfulness  of  our  republican  institu- 
tions that  air  does  to  animal  life,  I  must  solicit  for  it,  iu 
;-ome  detail,  the  consideration  of  the  Board.  Our  law 
enacts,  that  every  town  containing  five  hundred  families, 
or  householders  (taken  here  to  be  equivalent  to  three 
thousand  inhabitants,  or  six  persons  to  a  family,  on  an 
average),  shall  maintain  a  school,  to  be  kept  by  a  master 
of  competent  ability  and  good  morals,  "for  the  benefit  of 
all  the  inhabitants  of  the  town,"  ten  months,  at  least,  ex- 
clusive of  vacations,  in  each  year,  who,  in  addition  to  the 
branches  of  learning  to  be  taught  in  the  district  schools, 
shall  give  instruction  in  the  history  of  the  United  States, 
book-keeping,  surveying,  geometry,  and  algebra  ;  and  in 
towns  of  four  thousand  inhabitants,  the  master  of  such 
school  shall  be  competent  to  instruct  in  the  Latin  and 
Greek  languages,  and  general  history,  rhetoric,  and  logic. 
Iu  this  Commonwealth,  there  are  forty-three  towns,  ex- 
clusive of  the  city  of  Boston,  coming  within  the  provis- 
ions above  recited.  I  leave  this  city  out  of  the  computa- 
tion, because  the  considerations,  appertaining  to  it  iu 
connection  with  this  subject,  are  peculiar  to  itself.  I  need 
only  mention,  that  Common  Schools,  in  Boston,  valuable 
as  they  are,  bear  no  proportion  to  the  whole  means  of 
education  and  improvement  which  they  do  in  the  coun- 
try. These  forty-three  towns  contain  an  aggregate  of 
about  two-fifths  of  all  the  population  of  the  State,  exclu- 


414  THE  SECRETARY'S 

sive  of  the  metropolis.  Of  these  forty-three  towns,  only 
fourteen  maintain  those  schools  "  for  the  benefit  of  all 
the  inhabitants  of  the  town,"  which  the  law  requires. 
The  other  twenty-nine  towns,  in  which  this  provision  of 
the  law  is  wholly  disregarded,  contain  a  very  large  frac- 
tion over  one-fifth  part  of  the  whole  population  of  the 
State,  out  of  Boston.  These  twenty-nine  delinquent 
towns,  if  we  leave  out  the  three  cities  of  Boston.  Lowell, 
and  Salem,  stand  in  the  very  front  rank  of  wealth  and 
population.  They  contain  thirty-three  thousand  five 
hundred  and  sixty-six  persons  between  the  ages  of  four 
and  sixteen  years.  And  while  the  two  hundred  and 
ninety-four  towns,  heard  from,  raise  by  taxes,  for  the  sup- 
port of  Common  Schools,  a  sum  equal  to  two  dollars  and 
eighty-one  cents  for  each  of  the  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
five  thousand  and  fifty-three  persons  supposed  to  be  wholly 
dependent  upon  the  Common  Schools,  these  twenty-nine 
rich  and  populous  towns  raise  but  two  dollars  and  twenty- 
one  cents  each  for  the  thirty-three  thousand  five  hundred 
and  sixty-six  children  they  contain  between  the  ages  of 
four  and  sixteen  years.  And  so  much  as  these  wealthy 
towns  fall  short  of  their  contributive  share  of  the  two 
dollars  and  eighty-one  cents,  so  much  must  the  other 
towns  overrun  theirs.  In  these  twenty-nine  towns,  which 
do  not  keep  the  "  town  school  "  required  by  law,  the  sum 
of  forty-seven  thousand  seven  hundred  and  seventy-^ix 
dollars  is  expended  in  private  schools  and  academies, 
while  only  seventy-four  thousand  three  hundred  and 
thirteen  dollars  is  expended  for  the  support  of  public 
schools. 

The  average  expense  for  tuition  of  all  those  attending 
private  schools  and  academies,  inclusive  of  those  small 
and  short  private  schools  which  are  kept  in  the  districts 
between  the  winter  and  summer  terms,  and  which  com- 


FIRST  ANNUAL   REPORT.  415 

prise,  probably,  more  than  one-half  of  the  scholars  attend- 
ing the  whole  number,  is  more  than  fourfold  the  average 
expense  of  those  attending  the  public  schools. 

In  the  above  computation,  respecting  towns  obliged  by 
law  to  maintain  a  school  "  for  the  benefit  of  all  the  in- 
habitants," I  have  included  in  the  class,  observant  of  the 
law,  one  town  where  no  such  school  is  yet  established, 
but  preparations  only  are  making  to  open  one  the  ensu- 
ing season  ;  and  two  other  towns,  where,  though  such 
schools  exist,  yet  their  accommodations  for  room,  and 
their  provisions  for  instruction,  are  so  limited  as  to  ren- 
der the  adoption  of  arbitrary  rules  absolutely  indispen- 
sable, for  the  exclusion  of  many  children  desirous  of 
attending  them.  The  results  would  have  been  far  more 
criminating,  had  I  not  adopted  this  most  exculpatory 
construction. 

The  refusal  of  the  town  to  maintain  the  free  town  school 
drives  a  portion  of  its  inhabitants  to  establish  the  private 
school  or  academy.  When  established,  these  institutions 
tend  strongly  to  diminish  the  annual  appropriations  of 
the  town  ;  they  draw  their  ablest  recruits  from  the  Com- 
mon Schools  ;  and,  by  being  able  to  offer  higher  compen- 
sation, they  have  a  pre-emptive  right  to  the  best  qualified 
teachers  ;  while,  simultaneously,  the  district  schools  are 
reduced  in  length,  deteriorated  in  quality,  and,  to  some 
extent,  bereft  of  talents. competent  for  instruction. 

Some  objections  are  urged,  on  both  sides,  to  a  restitu- 
tion of  our  system  to  its  original  design  ;  but,  as  they  are 
anti-social  in  their  nature  they  must  be  dissipated  by  a 
more  enlarged  view  of  the  subject.  Citizens,  living  re- 
mote from  the  place  where  the  town  school  would  proba- 
bly be  kept,  allege  the  difference  in  the  distances  of  resi- 
dence, and  the  consequent  inequality  of  advantages  de- 
rivable from  it,  as  arguments  against  its  maintenance. 


416  THE  SECRETARY'S 

They,  therefore,  resist  its  establishment,  and  thus  extin- 
guish all  chances  of  a  better  education  for  a  vast  major- 
ity of  the  children  in  the  town,  whatever  may  be  their 
talents  or  genius.  They  debar  some,  perhaps  their  own 
offspring,  from  the  means  of  reaching  a  higher  sphere 
of  usefulness  and  honor.  They  forbid  their  taking  the 
first  steps,  which  are  as  necessary  as  the  last,  in  the  as- 
cension to  excellence.  They  surrender  every  vantage- 
ground  to  those  who  can  and  will,  in  any  event,  com- 
mand the  means  of  a  higher  education  for  their  children. 
Because  the  balance  of  advantages  cannot  be  mathemat- 
ically adjusted,  as  in  the  nature  of  things  it  cannot  be, 
they  cast  their  own  shares  into  the  adverse  scale ;  as 
though  it  were  some  compensation,  when  there  is  not  an 
absolute  equality,  to  make  the  inequality  absolute.  The 
cost  of  education  is  nothing  to  the  rich,  while  the  means 
of  it  are  every  thing  to  the  poor. 

Even  if  the  argument  against  the  town  school,  thus 
broadly  stated,  had  validity,  its  force  is  essentially  im- 
paired by  the  consideration,  that  this  class  of  schools 
need  not  be  confined  to  one  fixed  place  ;  as  the  statute 
expressly  provides,  that  they  may  be  kept  "  alternately  at 
such  places  in  the  town,  as  the  inhabitants  at  their  an- 
nual meeting  shall  determine." 

On  the  other  hand,  the  patrons  of  the  private  school 
plead  the  moral  necessity  of  sustaining  it,  because,  they 
say,  some  of  the  children  in  the  public  school  are  so  ad- 
dicted to  profanity  or  obscenity,  so  prone  to  trickishness, 
or  to  vulgar  and  mischievous  habits,  as  to  render  a 
removal  of  their  own  children  from  such  contaminating 
influences  an  obligatory  precaution.  But  would  such 
objectors  bestow  that  guardian  care,  that  parental  watch- 
fulness, upon  the  Common  Schools,  which  an  institution, 
so  wide  and  deep-reaching  in  its  influences,  demands  of 


FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT.  417 

all  intelligent  men.  might  not  these  repellent  causes  be 
mainly  abolished  ?  Reforms  ought  to  be  originated  and 
carried  forward  by  the  intelligent  portion  of  society  ;  by 
those  who  can  see  most  links  in  the  chain  of  causes  and 
effects  ;  and  that  intelligence  is  false  to  its  high  trusts, 
which  stands  aloof  from  the  labor  of  enlightening  the 
ignorant  and  ameliorating  the  condition  of  the  unfortu- 
nate. And  what  a  vision  must  rise  before  the  minds  of 
all  men,  endued  with  the  least  glimmer  of  foresight,  in 
the  reflection,  that,  after  a  few  swift  years,  those  children 
whose  welfare  they  now  discard,  and  whose  associations 
they  deprecate,  will  constitute  more  than  five-sixths  of 
the  whole  body  of  that  community,  of  which  their  own 
children  will  be  only  a  feeble  minority,  vulnerable  at 
every  point,  and  utterly  incapable  of  finding  a  hiding- 
place  for  any  earthly  treasure,  where  the  witness,  the 
juror,  and  the  voter  cannot  reach  and  annihilate  it ! 

The  theory  of  our  laws  and  institutions  undoubtedly 
is,  first,  that  in  every  district  of  every  town  in  the  Com- 
monwealth, there  should  be  a  free  district  school,  suffi- 
ciently safe,  and  sufficiently  good,  for  all  the  children 
within  its  territory,  where  they  may  be  well  instructed  in 
the  rudiments  of  knowledge,  formed  to  propriety  of  de- 
meanor, and  imbued  with  the  principles  of  duty  ;  and 
secondly ,  in  regard  to  every  town,  having  such  an  in- 
creased population  as  implies  the  possession  of  sufficient 
wealth,  that  there  should  be  a  school  of  an  advanced 
character,  offering  an  equal  welcome  to  each  one  of  the 
same  children,  whom  a  peculiar  destination,  or  an  im- 
pelling spirit  of  genius,  shall  send  to  its  open  doors,  — 
especially  to  the  children  of  the  poor,  who  cannot  incur 
the  expenses  of  a  residence  from  home  in  order  to  attend 
such  a  school.  It  is  on  this  common  platform,  that  a 
general  acquaintanceship  should  be  formed  between  the 

VOL.  i.  27 


418  THE  SECRETARY'S 

children  of  the  same  neighborhood.  It  is  here  that  the 
affinities  of  a  common  nature  should  unite  them  together 
so  as  to  give  the  advantages  of  pre-occupancy  and  a  sta- 
ble possession  to  fraternal  feelings,  against  the  alienating 
competitions  of  subsequent  life. 

After  the  State  shall  have  secured  to  all  its  children 
that  basis  of  knowledge  and  morality  which  is  indispensa- 
ble to  its  own  security  ;  after  it  shall  have  supplied  them 
with  the  instruments  of  that  individual  prosperity,  whose 
aggregate  will  constitute  its  own  social  prosperity ;  then 
they  may  be  emancipated  from  its  tutelage,  each  one  to 
go  whithersoever  his  well-instructed  mind  shall  determine. 
At  this  point,  seminaries  for  higher  learning,  academies 
and  universities,  should  stand  ready  to  receive,  at  private 
cost,  all  whose  path  to  any  ultimate  destination  may  lie 
through  their  halls.  Subject,  of  course,  to  many  excep- 
tions,—  all,  however,  inconsiderable,  compared  with  the 
generality  of  the  rule,  —  this  is  the  paternal  and  compre- 
hensive theory  of  our  institutions  ;  and  is  it  possible, 
that  a  practical  contradiction  of  this  theory  can  be  wise, 
until  another  shall  be  devised,  offering  some  chances  at 
least  of  equally  valuable  results  ? 

Amongst  any  people,  sufficiently  advanced  in  intelli- 
gence to  perceive  that  hereditary  opinions  on  religious 
subjects  are  not  always  coincident  with  truth,  it  cannot 
be  overlooked,  that  the  tendency  of  the  private-school 
system  is  to  assimilate  our  modes  of  education  to  those 
of  England,  where  Churchmen  and  Dissenters,  —  each 
sect  according  to  its  own  creed,  —  maintain  separate 
schools,  in  which  children  are  taught,  from  their  tender- 
est  years,  to  wield  the  sword  of  polemics  with  fatal  dex- 
terity ;  and  where  the  gospel,  instead  of  being  a  temple 
of  peace,  is  converted  into  an  armory  of  deadly  weapons, 
for  social,  interminable  warfare.  Of  such  disastrous  con- 


FIRST    ANNUAL   REPORT.  419 

sequences,  there  is  but  one  remedy  and  one  preventive. 
It  is  the  elevation  of  the  Common  Schools.  Until  that  is 
accomplished  (for  which,  however,  they  ought  to  co-op- 
erate), those  who  are  able,  not  only  will,  but  they  are 
bound  by  the  highest  obligations  to,  provide  surer  and 
better  means  for  the  education  of  their  children. 

It  ought  not  to  be  omitted,  that  it  is  urged,  in  defence 
of  the  private-school  system,  that  it  is  preparing  a  class 
of  better  teachers  for  the  Common  Schools  than  they 
could  otherwise  obtain.  Suppose,  however,  that  the 
Common  Schools  were  what  they  should  be,  could  not 
they  prepare  the  teachers  as  well  ? 

I  trust  I  shall  not  be  deemed  to  have  given  an  undue 
importance  to  the  different  interests  involved  in  this  topic, 
when  it  is  considered,  that  more  th&n  five-sixths  of  the  chil- 
dren in  the  State  are  dependent  upon  the  Common  Schools 
for  instruction,  and  would  have  no  substitute  if  they  be- 
came valueless ;  while  less  than  one-sixth  are  educated 
in  the  private  schools  and  academies,  and  these  would  be 
educated,  even  if  the  Common  Schools  were  abolished. 
To  hold  one-sixth  of  the  children  to  be  equal  to  five-sixths, 
I  should  deem  to  be  as  great  an  error  in  morals  as  it 
would  be  in  arithmetic. 

The  number  of  scholars  attending  private  schools  and 
academies  (if  we  allow  four  thousand  for  Boston,  which 
omitted  to  make  any  return  respecting  that  fact  the  pres- 
ent year,  but  which  returned  four  thousand  as  the  num- 
ber last  year)  is  twenty-seven  thousand  two  hundred 
and  sixty-six,  and  the  aggregate  paid  for  their  tuition, 
$328,026.75,  while  the  sum  raised  by  taxation,  for  all  the 
children  in  the  State,  is  only  $465,228.04. 

Fourthly.  Another  component  element  in  the  pros- 
perity of  schools  is  the  competency  of  teachers.  Teach- 
ing is  the  most  difficult  of  all  arts,  and  the  profoundest 


420  THE  SECRETARY'S 

of  all  sciences.  In  its  absolute  perfection,  it  would  in- 
volve a  complete  knowledge  of  the  whole  heing  to  be 
taught,  and  of  the  precise  manner  in  which  every  possible 
application  would  affect  it ;  that  is,  a  complete  knowledge 
of  all  the  powers  and  capacities  of  the  individual,  with 
their  exact  proportions  and  relations  to  each  other,  and  a 
knowledge,  how,  at  any  hour  or  moment,  to  select  and 
apply,  from  a  universe  of  means,  the  one  then  exactly 
apposite  to  its  ever-changing  condition.  But  in  a  far 
more  limited  and  practical  sense,  it  involves  a  knowledge 
of  the  principal  laws  of  physical,  mental,  and  moral 
growth,  and  of  the  tendency  of  means,  not  more  to  im- 
mediate than  to  remote  results.  Hence  to  value  schools, 
by  length  instead  of  quality,  is  a  matchless  absurdity. 
Arithmetic,  grammar,  and  the  other  rudiments,  as  they 
are  called,  comprise  but  a  small  part  of  the  teachings  in 
a  school.  The  rudiments  of  feeling  are  taught  not  less 
than  the  rudiments  of  thinking.  The  sentiments  •  and 
passions  get  more  lessons  than  the  intellect.  Though 
their  open  recitations  may  be  less,  their  secret  rehearsals 
are  more.  And  even  in  training  the  intellect,  much  of 
its  chance  of  arriving,  in  after-life,  at  what  we  call  soand 
judgment,  or  common  sense,  much  of  its  power  of  per- 
ceiving ideas  as  distinctly  as  though  they  were  colored 
diagrams,  depends  upon  the  tact  and  philosophic  sagacity 
of  the  teacher.  He  has  a  far  deeper  duty  to  perform 
than  to  correct  the  erroneous  results  of  intellectual  pro- 
cesses. The  error  in  the  individual  case  is  of  little  con- 
sequence. It  is  the  false  projecting  power  in  the  mind,  — 
the  power  which  sends  out  the  error,  —  that  is  to  be  dis- 
covered and  rectified  ;  otherwise  the  error  will  be  re- 
peated as  often  as  opportunities  recur.  It  is  no  part  of 
a  teacher's  vocation  to  spend  day  after  day  in  moving 
the  hands  on  the  dial-plate  backwards  and  forwards,  in 


FIRST  ANNUAL  REPORT.  421 

order  to  adjust  them  to  the  true  time :  hut  he  is  to  adjust 
the  machinery  and  the  regulator,  so  that  they  may  indi- 
cate the  true  time  ;  so  that  they  may  be  a  standard  and 
measure  for  other  things,  instead  of  needing  other  things 
as  a  standard  and  measure  for  them.  Yet  how  can  a 
teacher  do  this,  if  he  be  alike  ignorant  of  the  mechanism 
and  the  propelling  power  of  the  machinery  he  superin- 
tends ? 

The  law  lays  its  weighty  injunctions  upon  teachers,  in 
the  following  solemn  and  impressive  language :  "  It  shall 
be  the  duty  of  all  instructors  of  youth  to  exert  their  best 
endeavors  to  impress  on  the  minds  of  children  and  youth, 
committed  to  their  care  and  instruction,  the  principles  of 
piety,  justice,  and  a  sacred  regard  to  truth,  love  to  their 
country,  humanity,  and  universal  benevolence,  sobriety, 
industry,  and  frugality,  chastity,  moderation,  and  tem- 
perance, and  those  other  virtues,  which  are  the  ornament 
of  human  society,  and  the  basis  upon  which  a  republican 
constitution  is  founded ;  and  it  shall  be  the  duty  of  such 
instructors  to  endeavor  to  lead  their  pupils,  as  their  ages 
and  capacities  will  admit,  into  a  clear  understanding  of 
the  tendency  of  the  above-mentioned  virtues  to  preserve 
and  perfect  a  republican  constitution,  and  secure  the  bless- 
ings of  liberty,  as  well  as  to  promote  their  future  happi- 
ness, and  also  to  point  out  to  them  the  evil  tendency  of 
the  opposite  vices"  Is  it  not  worthy  of  the  most  solemn 
deliberation,  whether,  under  our  present  system,  or  rather 
our  present  want  of  system,  in  regard  to  the  qualifications 
and  appointment  of  teachers,  we  are  in  any  way  of  real- 
izing, to  a  reasonable  and  practicable  extent,  a  fulfilment 
of  the  elevated  purposes  contemplated  by  the  law  ?  And 
will  not  an  impartial  posterity  inquire  what  measures 
had  been  adopted  by  the  lawgiver  to  insure  the  execution 
of  the  duties  which  he  had  himself  so  earnestly  and  sol- 
emnly enjoined  ? 


422  THE  SECRETARY'S 

Wherever  the  discharge  of  my  duties  has  led  me 
through  the  State,  with  whatever  intelligent  men  I  have 
conversed,  the  conviction  has  been  expressed  with  entire 
unanimity,  that  there  is  an  extensive  want  of  competent 
teachers  for  the  Common  Schools.  This  opinion  casts  no 
reproach  upon  that  most  worthy  class  of  persons,  engaged 
in  the  sacred  cause  of  education  ;  and  I  should  be  unjust 
to  those,  whose  views  I  am  here  reporting,  should  I  state 
the  fact  more  distinctly  than  the  qualification.  The 
teachers  are  as  good  as  public  opinion  has  demanded. 
Their  attainments  have  corresponded  with  their  opportu- 
nities ;  and  the  supply  has  answered  the  demand  as  well 
in  quality  as  in  number.  Yet,  in  numerous  instances, 
school  committees  have  alleged,  in  justification  of  their 
approval  of  incompetent  persons,  the  utter  impossibility 
of  obtaining  better  for  the  compensation  offered.  It  was 
stated  publicly  by  a  member  of  the  school  committee  of  a 
town,  containing  thirty  or  more  school  districts,  that  one- 
half  at  least  of  the  teachers  approved  by  them  would  be 
rejected,  only  that  it  would  be  in  vain  to  expect  better 
teachers  for  present  remuneration.  And,  without  a 
change  in  prices,  is  it  reasonable  to  expect  a  change  in 
competency,  while  talent  is  invited,  through  so  many 
other  avenues,  to  emolument  and  distinction  ?  From  the 
Abstract  of  the  School  Returns  of  this  Commonwealth 
(which  I  have  this  day  submitted  to  the  Board),  includ- 
ing Boston,  Salem,  Lowell,  Charlestown,  and  other  towns, 
with  their  liberal  salaries,  it  appears  that  the  average 
wages  per  month  paid  to  male  teachers  throughout  the 
State,  inclusive  of  board,  is  twenty-five  dollars  and  forty- 
four  cents  ;  and  to  female  teachers,  eleven  dollars  and 
thirty-eight  cents.  Considering  that  many  more  than 
half  of  the  whole  number  of  "teachers  are  employed  in  the 
counties  bordering  on  the  sea,  it  is  supposed  that  two 


FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT.  423 

dollars  and  fifty  cents  a  week  for  males,  and  one  dollar 
and  fifty  cents  a  week  for  females,  would  be  a  very  low 
estimate  for  the  average  price  of  their  board,  respectively, 
throughout  the  State.  In  the  country,  there  would  not 
be  this  difference  between  males  and  females,  but  in  the 
populous  towns  arid  cities  it  would  probably  be  greater. 
That  of  females  is  purposely  put  rather  low,  because  there 
were  several  towns  where  it  was  not  included,  by  the  re- 
turns, in  the  wages.  On  this  basis  of  computation,  the  av- 
erage wages  of  male  teachers  throughout  the  State  is  fif- 
teen dollars  and  forty-four  cents  a  month,  exclusive  of 
board,  or  at  the  rate  of  one  hundred  and  eighty -five  dollars 
and  twenty-eight  cents  by  the  year; — and  the  average 
wages  of  female  teachers,  exclusive  of  board,  is  five  dollars 
and  thirty-eight  cents  a  month,  or  at  the  rate  of  sixty-four 
dollars  and  fifty-six  cents  by  the  year. 

In  regard  to  moral  instruction,  the  condition  of  our 
public  schools  presents  a  singular,  and,  to  some  extent  at 
least,  an  alarming  phenomenon.  To  prevent  the  school 
from  being  converted  into  an  engine  of  religious  prose- 
lytism ;  to  debar  successive  teachers  in  the  same  school 
from  successively  inculcating  hostile  religious  creeds,  until 
the  children  in  their  simple-mindedness  should  be  alien- 
ated, not  only  from  creeds,  but  from  religion  itself;  the 
statute  of  1826  specially  provided  that  no  school-books 
should  be  used  in  any  of  the  public  schools,  "  calculated 
to  favor  any  particular  religious  sect  or  tenet."  The 
language  of  the  Revised  Statutes  is  slightly  altered,  but 
the  sense  remains  the  same.  Probably,  no  one  would  de- 
sire a  repeal  of  this  law  while  the  danger  impends  which  it 
was  designed  to  repel.  The  consequence  of  the  enactment, 
however,  has  been,  that  among  the  vast  libraries  of  books, 
expository  of  the  doctrines  of  revealed  religion,  none 
have  been  found,  free  from  that  advocacy  of  particular 


424  THE  SECRETARY'S 

"  tenets "  or  "  sects,"  which  includes  them  within  the 
scope  of  the  legal  prohibition  ;  or,  at  least,  no  such  books 
have  been  approved  by  committees,  and  introduced  into 
the  schools.  Independently,  therefore,  of  the  immeasura- 
ble importance  of  moral  teaching,  in  itself  considered, 
this  entire  exclusion  of  religious  teaching,  though  justifi- 
able under  the  circumstances,  enhances  and  magnifies,  a 
thousand-fold,  the  indispensableness  of  moral  instruction 
and  training.  Entirely  to  discard  the  inculcation  of  the 
great  doctrines  of  morality  and  of  natural  theology  has 
a  vehement  tendency  to  drive  mankind  into  opposite  ex- 
tremes ;  to  make  them  devotees  on  one  side,  or  profligates 
on  the'  other ;  each  about  equally  regardless  of  the  true  con- 
stituents of  human  welfare.  Against  a  tendency  to  these 
fatal  extremes,  the  beautiful  and  sublime  truths  of  ethics 
and  of  natural  religion  have  a  poising  power.  Hence 
it  will  be  learnt  with  sorrow,  that  of  the  multiplicity  of 
books  used  in  our  schools,  only  three  have  this  object  in 
view  ;  and  these  three  are  used  in  only  six  of  the  two 
thousand  nine  hundred  and  eighteen  schools  from  which 
returns  have  been  received. 

I  have  adverted  to  this  topic  in  this  connection,  not 
only  on  account  of  its  intrinsic  importance,  but  on  ac- 
count of  its  relationship  to  the  one  last  considered.  Under 
our  present  system,  indeed,  this  is  only  a  branch  of  the 
preceding  topic.  If  children  are  not  systematically  in- 
structed in  the  duties  they  now  owe,  as  sons  and  daugh- 
ters, as  brothers  and  sisters,  as  school- fellows  and  asso- 
ciates ;  in  the  duties  also  which  they  will  so  soon  owe, 
when,  emerging  from  parental  restraint  and  becoming  a 
part  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  State,  they  will  be  enrolled 
among  the  arbiters  of  a  nation's  destiny ;  is  not  the  im- 
portance immeasurably  augmented,  of  employing  teach- 
ers, who  will,  themselves,  be  a  living  lesson  to  their  pupils, 


FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT.  425 

of  decorous  behavior,  of  order,  of  magnanimity,  of  jus- 
tice, of  affection ;  and  who,  if  they  do  not  directly  teach 
the  principles,  will  still,  by  their  example,  transfuse  and 
instil  something  of  the  sentiment  of  virtue  ?  Engaged  in 
the  Common  Schools  of  this  State,  there  are  now,  out  of 
the  city  of  Boston,  but  few  more  than  a  hundred  male 
teachers,  who  devote  themselves  to  teaching  as  a  regular 
employment  or  profession.  The  number  of  females  is  a 
little,  though  not  materially,  larger.  Very  few  even  of 
these  have  ever  had  any  special  training  for  their  voca- 
tion. The  rest  are  generally  young  persons,  taken  from 
agricultural  or  mechanical  employments,  which  have  110 
tendency  to  qualify  them  for  the  difficult  station  ;  or  they 
are  undergraduates  of  our  colleges,  some  of  whom,  there 
is  reason  to  suspect,  think  more  of  what  they  are  to  re- 
ceive at  the  end  of  the  stipulated  term,  than  what  they 
are  to  impart  during  its  continuance.  To  the  great  ma- 
jority of  them  all,  however,  I  concede,  because  I  sincerely 
believe  it  is  their  due,  higher  motives  of  action  than  those 
which  govern  men  in  the  ordinary  callings  of  life ;  yet 
still,  are  they  not,  inevitably,  too  inexperienced  to  under- 
stand and  to  act  upon  the  idea,  that  the  great  secret  of 
insuring  a  voluntary  obedience  to  duty  consists  in  a  skil- 
ful preparation  of  motives  beforehand  ?  Can  they  be  ex- 
pected, as  a  body,  to  be  able  to  present  to  their  older  pupils 
a  visible  scale,  as  it  were,  upon  which  the  objects  of  life, 
so  far  forth  as  this  world  is  concerned,  are  marked  down, 
according  to  their  relative  values  ?  Among  the  pagan 
Greeks,  the  men  most  venerated  for  their  wisdom,  their 
Platos  and  Socrates,  were  the  educators  of  their  youth. 
And  after  such  teachers  as  we  employ  are  introduced 
into  the  schools,  they  address  themselves  to  the  culture 
of  Ihe  intellect  mainly.  The  fact  that  children  have 
moral  natures  and  social  affections,  then  in  the  most 


426  THE  SECRETARY'S 

rapid  state  of  development,  is  scarcely  recognized.  One 
page  of  the  daily  manual  teaches  the  power  of  commas ; 
another,  the  spelling  of  words ;  another,  the  rules  of  ca- 
dence and  emphasis ;  but  the  pages  are  missing  which 
teach  the  laws  of  forbearance  under  injury,  of  sympathy 
with  misfortune,  of  impartiality  in  our  judgments  of  men, 
of  love  and  fidelity  to  truth  ;  of  the  ever-during  relations 
of  men,  in  the  domestic  circle,  in  the  organized  govern- 
ment, and  of  stranger  to  stranger.  How  can  it  be  ex- 
pected that  such  cultivation  will  scatter  seeds,  so  that,  in 
the  language  of  Scripture,  "instead  of  the  thorn  shall 
come  up  the  fir-tree,  and  instead  of  the  brier  shall  come 
up  the  myrtle-tree  "  ?  If  such  be  the  general  condition 
of  the  schools,  is  it  a  matter  of  surprise,  that  we  see  lads 
and  young  men  thickly  springing  up  in  the  midst  of  us, 
who  startle  at  the  mispronunciation  of  a  word,  as  though 
they  were  personally  injured,  but  can  hear  volleys  of  pro- 
fanity, unmoved ;  who  put  on  arrogant  airs  of  superier 
breeding,  or  sneer  with  contempt,  at  a  case  of  false  spell- 
ing or  grammar,  but  can  witness  spectacles  of  drunken- 
ness in  the  streets  with  entire  composure  ?  Such  eteva- 
tion  of  the  subordinate,  such  casting-down  of  the  supreme, 
in  the  education  of  children,  is  incompatible  with  all  that 
is  worthy  to  be  called  the  prosperity  of  their  manhood. 
The  moral  universe  is  constructed  upon  principles,  not 
admissive  of  welfare  under  such  an  administration  of  its 
laws.  In  such  early  habits,  there  is  a  gravitation  and 
proclivity  to  ultimate  downfall  and  ruin.  If  persevered 
in,  the  consummation  of  a  people's  destiny  may  still  be 
a  question  of  time,  but  it  ceases  to  be  one  of  certainty. 
To  avert  the  catastrophe,  we  must  look  to  a  change  in 
our  own  measures,  not  to  any  repeal  or  suspension  of  the 
ordinances  of  Nature.  These,  as  they  were  originally 
framed  in  wisdom,  need  no  amendment.  Whoever  wishes 


FIRST  ANNUAL   REPORT.  427 

for  a  change  in  effects  without  a  corresponding  change  in 
causes,  wishes  for  a  violation  of  Nature's  laws.  He  pro- 
poses, as  a  remedy  for  the  folly  of  men,  an  abrogation  of 
the  wisdom  of  Providence. 

One  of  the  greatest  and  most  exigent  wants  of  our 
schools  at  the  present  time,  is  a  hook,  portraying,  with 
attractive  illustration  and  with  a  simplicity  adapted  to 
the  simplicity  of  childhood,  the  obligations  arising  from 
social  relationships ;  making  them  stand  out,  with  the 
altitude  of  mountains,  above  the  level  of  the  engross- 
ments of  life ;  —  not  a  book  written  for  the  copy-right's 
sake,  but  one  emanating  from  some  comprehension  of  the 
benefits  of  supplying  children,  at  an  early  age,  with  sim- 
ple and  elementary  notions  of  right  and  wrong  in  feeling 
and  in  conduct,  so  that  the  appetites  and  passions,  as  they 
spring  up  in  the  mind,  may,  by  a  natural  process,  be  con- 
formed to  the  principles,  instead  of  the  principles  being 
made  to  conform  to  the  passions  and  appetites. 

It  is  said,  by  a  late  writer  on  the  present  condition  of 
France,  to  have  been  ascertained,  after  an  examination 
of  great  extent  and  minuteness,  that  most  crimes  are  per- 
petrated in  those  provinces  where  most  of  the  inhabitants 
can  read  and  write.  Nor  is  this  a  mere  general  fact,  but 
the  ratio  is  preserved  with  mathematical  exactness ;  the 
proportion  of  those  who  can  read  and  write,  directly  rep- 
resenting the  proportion  of  criminals,  and  conversely. 
Their  morals  have  been  neglected,  and  the  cultivated 
intellect  presents  to  the  uncultivated  feelings,  not  only  a 
larger  circle  of  temptations,  but  better  instruments  for 
their  gratification. 

It  is  thought  by  some,  that  the  State  cannot  afford  any 
advance  upon  the  present  salaries  of  teachers,  which  we 
have  seen  to  be  on  an  average,  exclusive  of  board,  fifteen 
dollars  and  forty-four  cents  per  month  for  males,  and  five 


428  THE  SECRETARY'S 

dollars  and  thirty-eight  cents  for  females.  The  valuation 
of  the  State,  according  to  the  census  of  1830,  was  $208,- 
860,407.54.  During  the  past  season,  it  has  been  repeatedly 
stated,  in  several  of  the  public  papers,  and,  so  far  as  I  have 
seen,  without  contradiction  or  question,  that  it  is  now  equal 
to  three  hundred  millions.  The  amount  raised  by  taxes 
tlie  current  year,  for  the  support  of  Common  Schools,  in 
the  towns  heard  from,  is  four  hundred  and  sixty-five  thou- 
sand two  hundred  and  twenty-eight  dollars  and  four  cents, 
which,  if  we  assume  the  correctness  of  the  above  estimate 
respecting  the  whole  property  in  the  State,  is  less  than 
one  mill  and  six-tenths  of  a  mill  on  the  dollar. 

Would  it  not  seem,  as  though  the  question  were  put, 
not  in  sobriety,  but  in  derision,  if  it  were  asked,  whether 
something  more  than  one  six-hundredth  part  of  the  wel- 
fare of  the  State  might  not  come  from  the  enlightenment 
of  its  intellect  and  the  soundness  of  its  morals  ?  and  yet 
this  would,  to  some  extent  certainly,  involve  the  question 
whether  the  State  could  afford  any  increase  of  its  annual 
appropriations  for  schools. 

There  are  other  topics,  connected  with  this  subject, 
worthy  of  exposition,  did  time  permit.  I  can  enumerate 
but  one  or  two  of  them  in  closing  this  report. 

The  law  of  1836,  respecting  children  employed  in  fac- 
tories, is  believed  to  have  been  already  most  salutary  in 
its  operation.  I  have  undoubted  authority  for  saying, 
that,  in  one  place,  four  hundred  children  went  to  school, 
last  winter,  who  never  had  been  before,  and  whose  attend- 
ance then  was  solely  attributable  to  that  law.  Sufficient 
time  has  not  yet  elapsed  (as  the  law  took  effect  April  1, 
1837)  to  determine  whether  there  is  a  general  disposition 
to  comply  with  its  requirements.  So  far  as  I  have  learned, 
the  accounts  hold  out  an  encouraging  prospect  of  compli- 
ance on  the  part  of  the  owners  and  agents  of  manufactur- 


FIRST   ANNUAL   REPORT.  429 

ing  establishments,  notwithstanding  attempts  to  evade  it 
by  some  parents,  who  hold  their  children  to  be  articles  of 
property,  and  value  them  by  no  higher  standard  than  the 
money  they  can  earn. 

From  the  best  information  I  have  been  able  to  obtain. 
I  am  led  to  believe  that  there  are  not  more  than  fifty 
towns  in  the  State,  where  any  thing  worthy  the  name  of 
apparatus  is  used  in  schools.  With  few  exceptions,  Hoi- 
brook's  Common  -  School  apparatus,  and  occasionally  a 
globe,  conclude  the  list.  Thus  the  natural  superiority  of 
the  eye  over  all  the  other  senses,  in  quickness,  in  precision, 
in  the  vastness  of  its  field  of  operations,  in  its  power  of 
penetrating  into  any  interstices  where  light  can  go  and 
come,  and  of  perceiving,  in  their  just  collocations,  the 
different  parts  of  complex  objects,  is  foregone.  Children 
get  dim  and  imperfect  notions  about  many  things,  where, 
with  visible  illustrations,  they  might  acquire  living  and 
perfect  ones  at  a  glance.  This  great  defect  will  undoubt- 
edly be,  to  a  considerable  extent,  supplied  by  the  law  of 
April  12, 1837,  which  authorizes  school  districts  to  raise 
money  by  taxation,  to  be  expended  for  the  purchase  of 
apparatus  and  Common  -  School  Libraries,  in  sums  not 
exceeding  thirty  dollars  the  first  year,  and  ten  for  any 
succeeding  year. 

In  every  county  where  I  have  been,  excepting  two, 
county  associations  for  the  improvement  of  Common 
Schools  have  been  formed.  In  the  two  excepted  coun- 
ties, there  were  teachers'  associations  previously  existing. 
Measures  were  taken  to  make  these  associations  auxiliary 
to  the  Board  of  Education  in  the  general  plan  of  State 
operations.  These  county  associations  will  open  a  chan- 
nel of  communication  in  both  directions,  between  the 
Board  as  a  central  body,  and  the  several  towns  and  school 
districts  in  the  State ;  and  through  the  Board,  between 


430  THE  SECRETARY'S 

all  the  different  parts  of  the  State  ;  so  that  improvements, 
devised  or  discovered  in  any  place,  instead  of  being  wholly 
lost,  may  be  universally  diffused,  and  sound  views,  upon 
this  great  subject,  may  be  multiplied  by  the  number  of 
minds  capable  of  understanding  them.  Several  excellent 
addresses  have  already  emanated  from  committees,  ap- 
pointed by  these  associations,  or  by  the  conventions  which 
originated  them. 

If,  in  addition  to  these  county  associations,  town  asso- 
ciations could  be  formed,  consisting  of  teachers,  school- 
committee-men,  and  the  friends  of  education  generally, 
who  should  ^meet  to  discuss  the  relative  merits  of  differ- 
ent modes  of  teaching,  —  thus  discarding  the  worst,  and 
improving  even  the  best,  —  but  little,  perhaps  nothing 
more,  could  be  desired  in  the  way  of  systematic  organiza- 
tion. It  should  be  a  special  duty  of  all  the  members  of 
the  town  associations,  to  secure,  as  far  as  possible,  a  reg- 
ular and  punctual  attendance  of  the  children  upon  the 
schools. 

Some  means  of  obtaining  more  precise  information  re- 
specting the  number  of  scholars  attending  the  public 
schools,  and  the  regularity  of  that  attendance,  is  most 
desirable.  The  practice  of  keeping  registers  in  the 
schools,  indispensable  as  it  is  to  statistical  accuracy, 
seems  to  be  very  often  neglected.  In  preparing  the  ab- 
stract, evidence  has  been  constantly  occurring  of  the 
want  of  information,  which  such  registers  would  have 
supplied.  Sometimes,  the  committee  resort  to  conject- 
ure ;  sometimes  they  frankly  avow  their  ignorance  of  the 
desired  fact ;  and  sometimes  all  the  sums,  set  down  in 
several  columns  of  considerable  length,  have  a  common 
multiple,  which  is  incompatible  with  the  diversity  of 
actual  occurrences.  On  the  whole,  there  is,  undoubtedly, 
a  very  close  approximation  of  truth  ;  and  where  particu- 


FIRST   ANNUAL    REPORT.  431 

lars  are  so  numerous,  errors  on  one  side  will  often  balance 
and  cancel  errors  on  the  other ;  excepting  where  there  is 
some  standing  bias,  when  the  errors  will  all  be  on  the 
gravitating  side.  Still  exactness  should  be  aimed  at,  as 
statistics  are  every  day  becoming  more  and  more  the 
basis  of  legislation  and  economical  science.  While  the 
State,  in  the  administration  of  its  military  functions, 
establishes  a  separate  department,  fills  the  statute-books 
with  pages  of  minute  regulations  and  formidable  penal- 
ties, commissions  various  grades  of  officers,  so  that  the 
fact  of  every  missing  gun-flint  and  priming-wire  may  be 
detected,  transmitted,  and  recorded  among  its  archives, 
it  prescribes  no  means  of  ascertaining  how  many  of  its 
children  are  deserters  from  what  should  be  the  nurseries 
of  intelligence  and  morality.  This  is  mentioned  here 
with  no  view  of  disparaging  what  is  done,  but  only  to 
contrast  it  with  what  is  omitted. 

Not  a  little  inconvenience  results  from  the  fact,  that 
school  committees  are  elected  at  the  annual  town-meet- 
ings in  the  spring,  and  are  obliged  to  make  their  returns 
in  October  following.  Their  returns,  therefore,  cover 
but  half  the  time  of  their  own  continuance  in  office,  while 
they  cover  half  the  time  of  the  official  existence  of  their 
predecessors.  It  is  for  the  Legislature  to  say  whether 
there  be  any  good  reason,  why  the  time  covered  by  these 
returns  should  not  be  coincident  with  their  duration  in 
office. 

In  closing  this  report,  I  wish  to  observe,  that,  should  it 

ever  fall  under  the  notice,  either  of  individuals  or  of 

classes,  who  may  suspect  that  some  imputation  is  cast 

upon  them  by  any  of  its  statements,  I  wish  to  assure  them, 

vat  no  word  of  it  has  been  dictated  by  a  feeling  of  un- 

viidness  to  any  one.     The  object  of  whatever  has  been 

said  was  to  expose  defects  in  a  system  so  substantially 


432         THE  SECRETARY'S  FIRST  ANNUAL  REPORT. 

excellent,  as  to  requite  any  labor  for  its  reformation  ; 
and  all  the  remarks  which  may  seem  accusatory  of 
persons  connected  with  it  have  caused  ine  more  pain  to 
write,  than  they  can  any  one  to  read.  To  have  spoken  in 
universal  commendation  of  the  system  and  of  its  admin- 
istrators would  have  been  most  grateful,  could  it  have 
been,  also,  true  ;  but,  in  the  discharge  of  a  duty,  respect- 
ing one  of  the  most  valuable  and  enduring  of  human 
interests,  I  have  felt  that  it  would  be  unworthy  the  sacred 
character  of  the  cause,  if,  to  purchase  any  temporary 
gratification  for  others  or  for  myself,  I  could  have  sacri- 
ficed one  particle  of  the  permanent  utility  of  truth. 

HORACE   MANN, 

Secretary  of  the  Board  of  Education, 
Boston,  January  1,  1838. 


REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY  OP  THE  BOARD  OP  EDUCATION 
ON  THE  SUBJECT  OP  SCHOOLHOUSES. 

SUPPLEMENTARY  TO  HIS  FIRST  ANNUAL  REPORT. 


To  THE  BOARD  OF  EDUCATION. 

Gentlemen,  —  In  the  Report,  which  I  lately  submitted 
to  you  on  the  subject  of  our  "  Common  Schools  and 
other  means  of  popular  education,"  I  mentioned  school- 
house  architecture,  as  one  of  the  cardinal  points  in  the 
system,  and  I  reserved  the  consideration  of  that  topic  for 
a  special  communication. 

In  my  late  tour  of  exploration,  made  into  every  county 
in  the  State,  I  personally  examined  or  obtained  exact  and 
specific  information,  regarding  the  relative  size,  construc- 
tion, and  condition  of  about  eight  hundred  schoolhouses ; 
and,  in  various  ways — principally  by  correspondence  — 
I  have  obtained  general  information  respecting,  at  least, 
a  thousand  more. 

As  long  ago  as  1832,  it  was  said  by  the  Board  of  Cen- 
sors of  the  American  Institute  of  Instruction,  that  "  if 
we  were  called  upon  to  name  the  most  prominent  defects 
in  the  schools  of  our  country,  —  that  which  contributes 
most,  directly  and  indirectly,  to  retard  the  progress  of 
public  education,  and  which  most  loudly  calls  for  a 
prompt  and  thorough  reform,  —  it  would  be  the  want  of 
spacious  and  convenient  schoolhouses."  As  a  general 
fact,  I  do  not  think  the  common,  district  schoolhouses  are 

VOL.  I.  28  «3 


434          REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY 

better  now  than  when  the  above  remark  was  written.  I 
have,  therefore,  thought,  that  I  could,  at  this  time,  in  no 
other  way  more  efficiently  subserve  the  interests  of  the 
cause  in  which  we  are  engaged,  than  in  bringing  together, 
and  presenting  under  one  view,  the  most  essential  points 
respecting  the  structure  and  location  of  a  class  of  build- 
ings, which  may  be  said  to  constitute  the  household  of 
education. 

I  do  not  propose  to  describe  a  perfect  model,  and  to 
urge  a  universal  conformity.  It  is  obvious  that  some 
difference  in  construction  is  necessary,  according  to  the 
different  kind  of  school  to  be  kept.  In  each  case,  it  must 
be  considered,  whether  the  schoolroom  be  that  of  an 
academy  or  of  an  infant  school ;  whether  it  be  in  the 
city  or  in  the  country  ;  for  males  or  for  females,  or  both  ; 
whether  designed  to  accommodate  many  scholars,  or  only 
a  few ;  or,  whether  the  range  of  studies  to  be  pursued 
is  extensive,  or  elementary  only.  The  essentials  being 
understood,  the  plan  can  be  modified  for  adaptation  to 
each  particular  case. 

The  schoolhouses  in  the  State  have  a  few  common 
characteristics.  They  are,  almost  universally,  contracted 
in  size  ;  they  are  situated  immediately  on  the  road-side, 
and  are  without  any  proper  means  of  ventilation.  In 
most  other  respects,  the  greatest  diversity  prevails.  The 
floors  of  some  are  horizontal ;  those  of  others  rise  in  the 
form  of  an  amphitheatre,  on  two,  or  sometimes  on  three 
sides,  from  an  open  area  in  the  centre.  On  the  horizontal 
floors  the  seats  and  desks  are  sometimes  designed  only 
for  a  single  scholar ;  allowing  the  teacher  room  to  ap- 
proach on  either  side,  and  giving  an  opportunity  to  go 
out  or  into  the  seat,  without  disturbance  of  any  one.  In 
others,  ten  scholars  are  seated  on  one  seat,  and  at  one 
desk,  so  that  the  middle  ones  can  neither  go  out  nor  in 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  435 

without  disturbing,  at  least,  four  of  their  neighbors.  In 
others,  again,  long  tables  are  prepared,  at  which  the 
scholars  sit  face  to  face,  like  large  companies  at  dinner.  In 
others,  the  seats  are  arranged  on  the  sides  of  the  room, 
the  walls  of  the  house  forming  the  backs  of  the  seats,  and 
the  scholars,  as  they  sit  at  the  desks,  facing  inwards ; 
while  in  others,  the  desks  are  attached  to  the  walls,  and 
the  scholars  face  outwards.  The  form  of  schoolhouses 
is,  with  very  few  exceptions,  that  of  a  square  or  oblong. 
Some,  however,  are  round,  with  an  open  circular  area  in 
the  centre  of  the  room,  for  the  teacher's  desk  and  a  stove, 
with  seats  and  desks  around  the  wall,  facing  outwards, 
separated  from  each  other  by  high  partitions,  which  pro- 
ject some  distance  into  the  room,  so  that  the  scholars 
may  be  turned  into  these  separate  compartments,  as  into 
so  many  separate  stalls.  In  no  particular  does  chance 
seem  to  have  had  so  much  sway  as  in  regard  to  light.  In 
many,  so  much  of  the  walls  is  occupied  by  windows,  that 
there  is  but  little  difference  between  the  intensity  and  the 
changes  of  light  within  and  without  the  schoolroom : 
while  in  some  others,  there  is  but  one  small  window  on 
each  of  the  three  sides  of  the  house,  and  none  011  the 
fourth.  Without  specifying  further  particulars,  however, 
it  seems  clear  that  some  plan  may  be  devised,  combining 
the  substantial  advantages  and  avoiding  the  principal 
defects  of  all. 

In  the  Report,  above  referred  to,  it  was  observed,  that 
"  when  it  is  considered,  that  more  than  five-sixths  of  all 
the  children  in  the  State  spend  a  considerable  portion  of 
the  most  impressible  period  of  their  lives  in  the  school- 
house,  the  general  condition  of  those  ouildings  and  their 
influences  upon  the  young  stand  forth,  at  once,  as  topics 
of  prominence  and  magnitude.  The  construction  of 
schoolhouses  connects  itself  closely  with  the  love  of  study, 


436  REPOBT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

with  proficiency,  health,  anatomical  formation,  and  length 
of  life.  These  are  great  interests,  and  therefore  suggest 
great  duties.  It  is  believed,  that,  in  some  important  par- 
ticulars, their  structure  can  be  improved,  without  the 
slightest  additional  expense  ;  and  that,  in  other  respects, 
a  small  advance  in  cost  would  be  returned  a  thousand- 
fold in  the  improvement  of  those  habits,  tastes,  and  senti- 
ments of  our  children,  which  are  so  soon  to  be  developed 
into  public  manners,  institutions,  and  laws,  and  to  become 
unchangeable  history." 

The  subject  of  schoolhouse  architecture  will  be  best 
considered  under  distinct  heads. 

VENTILATION   AND   WARMING. 

Ventilation  and  warming  are  considered  together,  be- 
cause they  may  be  easily  made  to  co-operate  with  each 
other  in  the  production  of  health  and  comfort.  It  seems 
generally  to  have  been  forgotten,  that  a  room,  designed 
to  accommodate  fifty,  one  hundred,  and,  in  some  cases,  two 
hundred  persons,  should  be  differently  constructed  from 
one  intended  for  a  common  family  of  eight  or  ten  only. 
In  no  other  particular  is  this  difference  so  essential  as  in 
regard  to  ventilation.  There  is  no  such  immediate,  in- 
dispensable necessary  of  life  as  fresh  air.  A  man  may 
live  for  days,  endure  great  hardships,  and  even  perform 
great  labors,  without  food,  without  drink,  or  without 
sleep ;  but  deprive  him  of  air  for  only  one  minute,  and 
all  power  of  thought  is  extinct ;  he  becomes  as  incapable 
of  any  intellectual  operation  as  a  dead  man,  and  in  a  few 
minutes  more  he  is  gone  beyond  resuscitation.  Nor  is 
this  all;  —  but  just  in  proportion  as  the  stimulus  of  air 
is  withheld,  the  whole  system  loses  vigor.  As  the  ma- 
chinery in  a  water-mill  slackens  when  the  head  of 
water  is  drawn  down  ;  as  a  locomotive  loses  speed  if  the 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  437 

fire  be  not  seasonably  replenished  ;  just  so  do  muscle, 
nerve,  and  faculty  faint  and  expire,  if  a  sufficiency  of 
vital  air  be  not  supplied  to  the  lungs.  As  this  Report  is 
designed  to  produce  actual  results  for  the  benefit  of  our 
children  ;  and  as  it  is  said  to  be  characteristic  of  our 
people,  that  they  cannot  be  roused  to  action,  until  they 
see  the  reasons  for  it,  nor  restrained  from  action  when 
they  do,  I  shall  proceed  to  state  the  facts,  whether  pop- 
ular or  scientific,  which  bear  upon  this  important  subject. 
The  common,  or  atmospheric,  air,  consists,  mainly, 
of  two  ingredients,  one  only  of  which  is  endued  by 
the  Creator  with  the  power  of  sustaining  animal  life. 
The  same  part  of  the  air  supports  life  and  sustains  com- 
bustion ;  so  that  in  wells  or  cellars,  where  a  candle  will 
go  out,  a  man  will  die.  The  vital  ingredient,  which  is 
called  oxygen,  constitutes  only  about  twenty-one  parts  in 
a  hundred  of  the  air.  The  other  principal  ingredient, 
called  azote,  will  not  sustain  life.  This  proportion  is 
adapted  by  omniscient  wisdom,  with  perfect  exactness,  to 
the  necessities  of  the  world.  Were  there  any  material 
diminution  of  the  oxygen,  other  things  remaining  the 
same,  every  breathing  thing  would  languish,  and  waste, 
and  perish.  Were  there  much  more  of  it,  it  would  stim- 
ulate the  system,  accelerating  every  bodily  and  mental 
operation,  so  that  the  most  vigorous  man  would  wear  out 
in  a  few  weeks  or  days.  This  will  be  readily  understood, 
by  all  who  have  witnessed  the  effects  of  breathing  exhila- 
rating gas,  which  is  nothing  but  this  oxygen  or  vital  por- 
tion of  the  air,  sorted  out  and  existing  in  a  pure  state. 
Besides,  this  oxygen  is  the  supporter  of  combustion,  and, 
were  its  quantity  greatly  increased,  fire  would  hardly  be 
extinguishable,  even  by  water.  But  the  vital  and  the 
non-vital  parts  of  the  air  are  wisely  mingled  in  the  exact 
proportions,  best  fitted  for  human  utility  and  enjoyment ; 


438  REPORT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

and  all  our  duty  is  not  to  disturb  these  proportions. 
About  four  parts  of  the  twenty-one  of  vital  air  are  de- 
stroyed at  every  breath ;  so  that,  if  one  were  to  breathe 
the  same  air  four  or  five  times  over,  he  would  substan- 
tially exhaust  the  life-giving  principle  in  it,  and  his  bodily 
functions  would  convulse  for  a  moment,  and  then  stop. 
As  the  blood  and  the  air  meet  each  other  in  the  lungs, 
not  only  is  a  part  of  the  vital  air  destroyed,  but  a  poison- 
ous ingredient  is  generated.  This  poison  constitutes 
about  three  parts  in  a  hundred  of  the  breath  thrown  out 
from  the  lungs.  Nor  is  it  a  weak,  slow  poison,  but  one 
of  fatal  virulence  and  sudden  action.  If  the  poisonous 
parts  be  not  regularly  removed  (and  they  can  be  re- 
moved only  by  inhaling  fresh  air),  the  blood  absorbs 
them,  and  carries  them  back  into  the  system.  Just 
according  to  the  quantity  of  poison  forced  back  into  the 
blood,  follow  the  consequences  of  lassitude,  faintness,  or 
death.  The  poisonous  parts  are  called  carbonic  acid. 
They  are  heavier  than  the  common  air,  and  as  the  lungs 
throw  them  out  at  the  lips,  their  tendency  is  to  fall 
towards  the  ground  or  the  floor  of  a  room,  and  if  there 
were  no  currents  of  the  air,  they  would  do  so.  But  the 
other  parts  of  the  air,  being  warmed  in  the  lungs,  and 
rarefied,  are  lighter  than  the  common  air,  and  the  mo- 
ment they  pass  from  the  lips,  their  tendency  is  to  rise 
upward  towards  the  sky.  Were  these  different  portions 
of  the  air,  as  they  come  from  the  lungs,  of  different 
colors,  we  should,  if  in  a  perfectly  still  atmosphere,  see 
the  stream  divided,  part  of  it  falling  and  part  ascending. 
A  circulation  of  the  air,  however,  produced  out  of  doors 
by  differences  of  temperature,  and  in  our  apartments  by 
the  motion  of  their  occupants  and  by  other  causes,  keeps 
the  poisonous  parts  of  the  air,  to  some  extent,  mingled 
with  the  rest  of  it,  and  creates  the  necessity  of  occfisionally 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  439 

changing  the  whole.  Though  the  different  portions  of 
the  air  have  the  same  color  to  the  bodily  eye,  yet  in  the 
eye  of  reason  their  qualities  are  diametrically  opposite. 

Although  there  is  but  the  slightest  interval  between 
one  act  of  breathing  and  another,  yet,  in  a  natural  state 
of  things,  before  we  can  draw  a  second  breath,  the  air  of 
the  first  is  far  beyond  our  reach,  and  never  returns, 
until  it  has  gone  the  circuit  of  nature  and  been  reno- 
vated. Such  are  the  silent  and  sublime  operations,  go- 
ing on  day  and  night,  without  intermission,  all  round  the 
globe,  for  all  the  myriads  of  breathing  creatures  that 
inhabit  it,  without  their  notice  or  consciousness.  But, 
perhaps  some  will  suppose,  that,  in  this  way,  the  vital 
portion  of  the  air,  in  process  of  time,  will  be  wholly  con- 
sumed or  used  up  ;  or  that  the  poisonous  portion,  thrown 
off  from  the  lungs,  will  settle  and  accumulate  upon  the 
earth's  surface,  and  rise  around  us,  like  a  flood  of  water, 
so  high  as  eventually  to  flow  back  into  the  lungs,  and 
inflict  death.  All  this  may  be  done  ;  not  however  in  the 
course  of  nature,  but  only  by  suicidal  or  murderous  con- 
trivances. In  the  Black  Hole  of  Calcutta,  in  the  year 
1756,  one  hundred  and  forty-six  persons  were  confined  to 
a  room  only  eighteen  feet  square  for  ten  hours ;  and 
although  there  was  one  aperture  for  the  admission  of  air 
and  light,  one  hundred  and  twenty-three  had  perished  at 
the  end  of  that  time.  Only  twenty-three  survived,  and 
several  of  these  were  immediately  seized  with  the  typhus- 
fever.  In  the  Dublin  Hospital,  during  the  four  years 
preceding  1785,  out  of  seven  thousand  six  hundred  and 
fifty  children,  two  thousand  nine  hundred  and  forty-four 
died  within  a  fortnight  after  their  birth  ;  that  is,  thirty- 
eight  out  of  every  hundred.  TRe  cause  of  this  almost 
unexampled  mortality  was  suspected  by  Dr.  Clarke,  the 
physician,  who  caused  fresh  air  to  be  introduced  by 


440  REPORT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

means  of  pipes,  and  during  the  three  following  years,  the 
deaths  were  only  one  hundred  and  sixty-five  out  of  four 
thousand  two  hundred  and  forty-three,  or  less  than 
four  in  a  hundred  ;  that  is,  a  diminution  in  the  propor- 
tion of  deaths  of  more  than  than  thirty-four  per  cent. 
Hence  it  appears,  that,  through  a  deficiency  of  pure  air. 
in  one  hospital,  during  the  space  of  four  years,  there  per- 
ished more  than  twenty-six  hundred  children.  In  Na- 
ples, Italy,  there  is  a  grotto,  where  carbonic  acid  issues 
from  the  earth,  arid  flows  along  the  bottom  in  a  shallow 
stream.  Dogs  are  kept  by  the  guides  who  conduct  trav- 
ellers to  see  this  natural  curiosity,  and,  for  a  small  fee, 
they  thrust  the  noses  of  the  dogs  into  the  gas.  The  con- 
sequence is,  that  the  dogs  are  immediately  seized  with 
convulsions,  and,  if  not  released,  they  die  in  five  minutes. 
But  let  us  not  cry,  Shame!  too  soon  on  those  who  are 
guilty  of  this  sordidness  and  cruelty.  We  are  repeating 
every  day,  though  in  rather  a  milder  fashion,  the  same 
experiment,  except  that  we  use  children  instead  of  dogs. 

But  why,  in  process  of  time,  it  may  still  be  asked,  is 
not  the  vital  principle  of  the  air  wholly  exhausted,  and 
the  valleys  and  plains  of  the  earth,  at  least,  filled  with 
the  fatal  one  ?  Again,  Divine  Wisdom  has  met  the  exi- 
gency in  a  manner  fitted  to  excite  our  admiration  and 
wonder.  The  vegetable  world  requires  for  its  growth 
the  very  substance  which  the  animal  world  rejects  as  its 
death ;  and  in  its  turn,  all  vegetable  growth  yields  a  por- 
tion of  oxygen  for  the  support  of  animal  life.  One  flour- 
ishes upon  that  which  is  fatal  to  the  other.  Thus  the 
equilibrium  is  for  ever  restored ;  or  rather  it  is  never 
disturbed.  They  exchange  poison  for  aliment ;  death 
for  life  ;  and  the  elements  of  a  healthful  existence  flow 
round  in  a  circle  for  ever.  The  deadly  poison  thrown 
from  the  lungs  of  the  inhabitants  of  our  latitudes,  in  the 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  441 

depths  of  winter,  is  borne  in  the  great  circuit  of  the  at- 
mosphere to  the  tropical  regions,  and  is  there  converted 
into  vegetable  growth  ;  while  the  oxygen,  exhaled  in  the 
processes  of  tropical  vegetation,  mounts  the  same  car  of 
the  winds,  and,  in  its  appointed  time,  revisits  the  higher 
latitudes.*  Why  should  we  violently  invade  this  beauti- 
ful arrangement  of  Providence  ? 

There  is  another  fact,  impossible  to  be  overlooked  in 
considering  this  subject.  Who  can  form  any  just  concep- 
tion of  the  quantity  of  air  which  has  been  created  ? 
Science  has  demonstrated,  that  it  is  poured  out  between 
forty  and  fifty  miles  deep  all  round  the  globe.  It  was  to 
prevent  the  necessity  of  our  using  it,  second-hand,  that  it 
was  given  us  by  sky-fuls.  Then,  again,  it  is  more  liquid 
than  water.  It  rushes  into  every  nook  and  crevice,  and 
fills  every  unoccupied  place  upon  the  earth's  surface.  All 
the  powers  of  art  fail  in  wholly  excluding  it  from  any 
given  space.  We  cannot  put  our  organs  of  breathing 
where  some  of  it  will  not  reach  them.  All  we  can  do  is 
to  corrupt  it,  so  that  none  but  fatal  or  noxious  air  shall 
reach  them.  This  we  do.  Now  if  the  air  were  a  product 
of  human  pains-taking ;  if  laborers  sweated  or  slaves 
groaned  to  prepare  it ;  if  it  were  transported  by  human 
toil  from  clime  to  clime,  like  articles  of  export  and  im- 
port, between  foreign  countries,  at  a  risk  of  property  and 
life  ;  if  there  were  ever  any  dearth  or  scarcity  of  it ;  if 
its  whole  mass  could  be  monopolized,  or  were  subject  to 
accident  or  conquest,  then  economy  might  be  commend- 
able. But  ours  is  a  parsimony  of  the  inexhaustible.  We 
are  prodigals  of  health,  of  which  we  have  so  little,  and 
niggards  of  air,  of  which  we  have  so  much.  In  the  State 
Lunatic  Hospital  at  Worcester,  there  are  eight  hundred 
feet  cubic  measure  to  each  apartment,  for  one  patient 

*  See  Appendix  B  and  C. 


442  REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY 

only.  Iii  the  Prison  at  Charlestown,  one  huncred  and 
seventy-one  and  a  half  cubic  feet  are  allowed  to  each 
prisoner's  cell.  In  addition  to  this,  free  ingress  and  egress 
of  the  air  is  allowed,  by  means  of  apertures  and  flues  in 
the  walls.  In  the  Penitentiary,  erected  at  Philadelphia 
a  few  years  since,  thirteen  hundred  cubic  feet  were  al- 
lowed to  each  prisoner,  solitarily  confined  ;  while  in  some 
of  our  schoolrooms,  less  than  forty  cubic  feet  is  allowed 
to  a  scholar,  without  any  proper  means  of  ventilation  ; 
und  in  one  case,  a  school  has  been  constantly  kept,  for 
thirteen  years,  in  a  room  which  allows  less  than  thirty 
feet  of  air  to  the  average  number  of  scholars  now  attend- 
ing it ;  and  even  this  schoolroom,  contracted  as  it  is,  is 
besieged  by  such  offensive  effluvia  from  without,  that  the 
windows  are  scarcely  opened,  even  in  summer. 

I  know  of  but  three  causes  which  can  have  led  to  these 
opprobrious  results.  In  populous  and  crowded  places, 
the  price  of  land  may  have  been  thought  to  justify  the  use 
of  small  rooms  for  many  scholars.  Bat  this  can  never 
have  been  even  a  pecuniary  argument  of  any  weight  with 
a  financial  mind  ;  for  the  ultimate  public  expense  of  the 
sickness  and  poverty  engendered  would  overbalance,  a 
thousand-fold,  the  requisite  original  outlay.  Besides, 
even  if  there  were  limit  and  constraint  horizontally,  there 
can  have  been  none  perpendicularly. 

A  motive  of  some  efficacy  may  have  been  felt  in  the 
increased  expense  of  erecting  a  house  of  adequate  size. 
This  is  a  tangible  motive.  But  how  feeble  is  it,  when 
compared  with  the  health  and  comfort  of  children,  their 
love  of  study,  and  their  consequent  proficiency  in  it ! 
Should  a  case  of  necessity  actually  arise,  where  children 
were  obliged  to  undergo  some  privation,  far  better  would 
it  be  to  stint  them  in  their  clothes,  their  food,  or  their 
fuel,  than  in  their  air.  But  in  regard  to  schoolhouses 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  443 

which  are  built  at  the  public  expense,  such  a  necessity 
never  can  occur.  Besides,  these  considerations  affect  size 
only,  not  ventilation. 

An  economy  of  the  air,  which  has  once  been  warmed, 
is  the  only  remaining  motive  for  using  foul  air.  But  if 
the  warm  air  is  saved,  the  foul  air  must  be  breathed  ; 
for  they  are  the  same.  For  several  years  past,  high  ceil- 
ings have  been  strenuously  recommended  as  a  compro- 
mise of  the  difficulty.  But  when  the  room  is  high,  it  is 
necessary,  in  the  first  place,  to  warm  a  much  greater 
quantity  of  air  than  is  required  for  breathing,  and  when 
it  has  all  been  once  breathed,  it  becomes  as  necessary  to 
remove  it  and  supply  its  place  with  pure  air  as  though 
the  quantity  had  been  small.  Besides,  pure  air  at  a  lower 
temperature  will  warm  the  human  system  more  than  im- 
pure air  at  a  higher.  In  our  climate,  a  moderately  low 
ceiling  is  preferable  to  a  high  one,  because,  with  such,  a 
much  larger  portion  of  the  air  which  we  have  been  at  the 
expense  to  heat  can  be  used. 

But  it  is  believed,  that,  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases, 
this  habitual  use  of  foul  air  is  not  the  result  of  calcula- 
tion, but  of  oversight.  And  it  is  worthy  of  especial  at- 
tention, that  many  of  our  schoolrooms,  where  the  greatest 
privation  of  healthful  air  is  now  suffered,  were  constructed 
originally  with  a  large  open  fireplace,  which  was  of  itself 
a  sufficient  ventilator  ;  and  that  afterwards  close  stoves 
were  introduced  to  overcome  the  coldness  of  the  rooms, 
without  any  reflection,  that  what  was  gained  in  warmth 
and  comfort  was  lost  in  the  purity  of  the  atmosphere, 
and  consequently  in  bodily  health  and  mental  vigor. 

In  regard  to  this  most  immediate  of  all  the  necessaries 
of  life,  that  arrangement  would  be  perfect  which  should 
introduce  the  life-sustaining  air  just  as  fast  as  it  should  be 
wanted  for  breathing ;  and,  when  b:  eathed,  should  carry 


444  REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY 

it  off,  not  to  be  breathed  again,  until  it  should  be  reno- 
vated and  purified  in  the  laboratory  of  Nature.  If  one 
washes  himself  in  running  water,  he  will  never  dip  up 
the  same  water  a  second  time.  So  should  it  be  with  the 
air  we  respire.  An  arrangement  producing  this  effect  is 
perfectly  practicable  and  easy.  By  examining  a  most 
valuable  communication,  placed  at  the  end  of  this  report, 
from  Dr.  Woodward,  the  Superintendent  of  the  Lunatic 
Hospital  at  Worcester,  it  will  appear,  that  fifty  persons 
will  consume  the  entire  body  of  air  in  a  room,  thirty  feet 
square  and  nine  feet  high,  in  about  forty  minutes.  If, 
however,  the  room  be  perfectly  tight,  the  air,  once  re- 
spired, will  be  partially  mingled  with  the  whole  mass  of 
air  in  the  room,  and  will  offer  itself  to  be  breathed  again. 
What  is  wanted,  therefore,  is  a  current  of  fresh  air  flow- 
ing into  the  room,  while  a  current  of  the  respired  air  flows 
out  of  it ;  both  to  be  equal  to  the  quantity  required  for 
the  occupants.  Under  such  circumstances,  if  there  be 
but  little  motion  in  the  room,  the  poisonous  part  of  the 
air  will  settle  towards  the  floor  as  soon  as  it  is  cast  from 
the  lungs,  while  the  other  part  of  it,  being  raised  almost 
to  a  blood-heat  in  the  lungs,  will  rise  to  the  ceiling.  In 
the  ceiling,  therefore,  should  be  an  aperture  for  its  escape. 
The  carbonic  acid  will  tend  to  flow  out  under  the  door, 
or  when  it  is  opened.  If  the  ceiling  be  concave  or  dome- 
shaped,  only  one  aperture  will  be  necessary  ;  —  if  horizon- 
tal, and  the  room  be  large,  several  may  be  required.  The 
number  will  depend  upon  the  manner  in  which  the  room 
is  heated.  If  the  house  be  of  one  story  only,  the  aper- 
tures will  open  into  the  attic.  On  the  upper  side  of 
the  aperture  let  a  trap-door  be  hung,  to  be  raised  by  a 
cord,  running  over  a  pulley,  and  coming  down  into  the 
room,  or  (which  is  more  simple)  by  wires,  after  the  man- 
ner of  house-bells.  This  door  should  be  prevented  from 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  445 

opening  to  a  greater  angle  than  eighty  degrees,  so  that 
when  the  cord  is  loosened  it  will  fall  by  its  own  weight,  and 
dose  the  orifice.  The  door  will  be  opened,  more  or  less, 
according  to  the  temperature  of  the  weather  and  the  de- 
gree of  wind  prevailing  without,  so  as  always  to  carry  off 
the  impure  air  just  as  fast  as  it  is  fouled  by  the  lungs. 
Any  person,  by  stepping  into  the  open  air  and  inhaling  it 
for  half  a  minute,  can,  on  returning  into  the  room,  deter- 
mine the  state  of  the  air  within  it.  If  the  apertures 
through  the  ceiling  open  into  the  attic,  the  air  can  be  let 
off,  either  through  fan-windows  at  the  ends,  or  through 
sky-lights  ;  or  an  opening  can  be  made  into  the  chimney, 
and  a  flue  carried  up  to  its  top.  In  the  last  case,  the  floor  of 
the  attic,  immediately  under  the  flue,  should  be  plastered, 
or  covered  with  something  incombustible,  to  make  it  per- 
fectly secure  against  cinders  coming  down  through  the 
flue.  If  the  building  be  two  stories  high,  the  apertures 
for  ventilation  in  the  lower  story,  instead  of  being  in  the 
upper  ceiling  of  the  room,  should  be  in  the  side  walls, 
next  the  ceiling,  and  so  ascend,  by  flues,  through  the 
walls  of  the  second  story  until  they  open  into  the  attic. 
Sliding  dampers  can  be  used,  in  order  to  open  or  close 
these  lower  orifices,  so  as  to  regulate  the  escape  of  air 
from  the  room.  Where  a  schoolhouse  two  stories  in  height 
has  been  built  in  disregard  of  the  laws  of  health  and  life, 
the  lower  room  may  be  ventilated  by  making  apertures  in 
its  upper  ceiling,  next  to  the  walls  of  the  room,  and  car- 
rying up  flues  through  the  second  story  in  tight  boxes, 
attached  to  the  walls,  and  opening  into  the  attic  through 
similar  apertures  in  the  upper  ceiling  of  the  second  story. 
These  boxes  will  appear,  in  the  second  story,  to  be  only 
casings  of  posts  or  pilasters,  and  will  not  materially  dis- 
figure the  room. 

The  best  apparatus  for  expelling  foul  air  from  a  room 


44C  REPORT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

consists  in  the  proper  means  of  introducing  a  supply  of 
fresh  warm  air.  Undoubtedly,  the  best  mode  of  warming 
a  room  is  to  have  a  cellar  under  it,  and  to  place  a  furnace 
in  the  cellar.  Some  place  of  storing  wood  seems  indis- 
pen sable  for  every  schoolhouse,  and  a  cellar  could  ordina- 
rily be  dug  and  stoned  as  cheaply  as  a  woodhouse  could 
be  built.  I  suppose,  also,  that  a  schoolhouse  would  be 
much  less  exposed  to  take  fire  from  a  furnace  well  set, 
than  from  a  common  fireplace  or  stove.  But  the  great 
advantage  of  warming  by  a  furnace  is,  that  all  parts  of 
the  room  are  kept  at  the  same  temperature.  The  air 
presses  outward  instead  of  inward,  through  every  crack 
and  crevice  in  door  or  window.  No  scholars  are  injured 
by  being  forced  to  sit  in  the  vicinity  of  a  stove  or  fireplace  : 
nor  is  any  part  of  the  room  encumbered  by  either.  When 
the  latter  are  used,  many  scholars,  who  sit  in  exposed  sit- 
uations, will  spend  half  an  hour  a  day,  and  often  more,  in 
going  to  the  fire  to  warm  themselves  ;  and,  in  addition  to 
those  whose  comfort  requires  them  to  go,  idlers,  from  all 
sides  of  the  house,  will  make  it  a  rendezvous  or  halfway 
place,  for  visiting.  With  an  unequal  diffusion  of  heat  in 
a  school  warmed  by  a  stove,  or  fireplace,  I  believe  it  is  al- 
ways true,  that  diligent  scholars  will  stay  in  their  seats  and 
suffer,  while  the  lazy  will  go  to  the  fire  to  drone.  Some 
other  advantages  of  setting  a  furnace  in  a  cellar  to  warm 
a  school  are  mentioned  in  the  excellent  communication 
of  Dr.  Woodward,  above  referred  to.  Feet  can  be  warmed 
or  dried  at  the  orifices  for  admitting  the  heated  air  from 
a  furnace,  as  well  as  at  a  stove.  There  may  be  two  of  these 
orifices,  one  for  the  boys  and  one  for  the  girls.  The  set- 
ting of  a  furnace  requires  some  skill  and  science.  We 
often  meet  with  a  prejudice  against  furnaces,  which  be- 
longs not  to  the  furnaces  themselves,  but  to  the  ignorance 
of  those  who  set  them.  There  seems  to  be  no  objection, 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  447 

except  it  be  that  of  appearance,  against  setting  the  furnace 
so  high  in  the  cellar,  as  that  its  brick  or  soapstone  top 
shall  be  on  a  level  with  the  floor  of  the  room,  and  consti- 
tute a  part  of  it. 

If  a  common  stove  must  be  used  for  warming  the  room, 
then  let  it  be  enclosed  in  a  case  of  sheet-iron,  rising  from 
the  floor  on  three  sides  of  the  stove  and  bending  over  it ; 
not,  however,  so  as  to  close  over  its  top,  but  leaving  an 
opening  in  the  case,  greater  or  less,  according  to  the  size 
of  the  stove  and  of  the  room.  The  sides  of  the  case 
should  be  two  or  three  inches  from  the  sides  of  the  stove. 
The  stove  should  stand  on  legs  a  few  inches  from  the  floor, 
and  fresh  air  should  be  introduced  from  out  of  doors,  and 
conducted  under  the  stove  in  a  tube  or  trough,  which,  as 
it  rises  around  the  stove,  will  be  warmed,  and  enter  the 
room  through  the  opening  in  the  case  at  the  top.  A  slide 
in  the  tube  or  trough  will  regulate  the  quantity  of  air  to 
be  admitted.  The  sensations  experienced  in  a  room  into 
which  the  external  air  is  directly  introduced,  and  warmed 
in  its  passage,  belong  to  a  class  entirely  distinct  from 
those  engendered  by  air  warmed  in  the  ordinary  way. 
They  will  be  grateful  to  the  pupils,  and  will  promote  elas- 
ticity and  vigor  of  mind.  It  would  be  well  to  place  the 
stove  directly  in  the  current  of  air  caused  by  opening  the 
door. 

The  common  expedient  of  letting  down  windows  from 
the  top,  so  that  the  noxious  air  may  escape,  and  the  vacuum 
be  filled  with  the  pure,  accomplishes  the  object  in  a  very 
imperfect,  and,  at  the  same  time,  an  objectionable  manner. 
If  there  be  any  wind  abroad,  or  if  there  be  a  great  dif- 
ference in  temperature  between  the  external  air  and  the 
air  of  the  room,  the  former  rushes  in  with  great  violence 
and  mingles  with  the  heated  and  corrupted  air,  so  that, 
unless  several  roomfuls  of  air  be  admitted,  a  portion  of 


448  REPORT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

that  which  has  been  rendered  unfit  for  use  will  still  re- 
main, while  some  that  has  been  partially  warmed  will  es- 
cape. But  the  greatest  objection  is,  that  the  cold  air 
drops  like  a  shower-bath  upon  the  scholars'  heads  :  —  a 
mode  which  all  agree  in  pronouncing  unhealthful,  and 
sometimes  dangerous. 

Some  schoolrooms  are  heated  by  a  common  close  stove, 
the  front  part  of  which  is  placed  in  the  wall,  so  that  the 
door,  where  the  stove  is  filled,  is  in  an  entry,  while  the  body 
of  the  stove  is  in  the  schoolroom.  It  depends  on  other 
circumstances,  whether  this  arrangement  is  beneficial  or 
injurious.  Where  the  air  which  keeps  up  the  fire  in  the 
stove  is  taken  from  an  entry,  it  passes  through  the  funnel 
and  chimney,  and  leaves  the  body  of  air  in  the  room 
unchanged.  This  is  no  objection,  provided  the  air  in  the 
room  is  changed  otherwise.  But  if  no  other  provision  is 
made  for  changing  the  air  in  the  room,  the  draught 
of  the  stove  becomes  important  for  that  purpose.  And 
although  this  may  involve  the  evil  of  drawing  in  just  as 
much  air,  through  the  crevices  and  openings,  as  is  car- 
ried off  through  the  stove,  yet  it  is  a  less  evil  than  that 
of  stagnant  air  in  the  room.  If,  however,  the  room  is 
warmed  by  introducing  a  current  of  air  from  without, 
which  is  heated  in  its  passage,  then  the  arrangement  of 
feeding  the  stove  in  an  entry  is  unobjectionable,  and  may, 
often,  be  very  commodious. 

If  the  room  be  so  warmed  that  the  air  presses  from 
within,  outwards,  the  doors  should  be  hung  so  as  to  open 
inwards  ;  if,  on  the  other  hand,  the  room  be  warmed  by  a 
common  stove  or  fireplace,  the  external  air  will  press  in- 
wards, and  therefore  the  doors  should  be  hung  so  as  to 
open  outwards.  Where  the  schoolroom  has  been  so  fault- 
ily constructed,  that  a  current  of  air  blows  directly  upon 
a  row  of  scholars  every  time  the  door  is  opened,  the  door 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  449 

should  be  rehung,  or  have  a  spring  to  prevent  its  being 
left  open. 

A  thermometer  should  be  kept  in  every  schoolroom, 
and  hung  on  the  coolest  side  of  it.  The  proper  tempera- 
ture should  be  determined  by  unchangeable  laws  ;  not  by 
the  variable  feelings  or  caprice  of  any  individual.  With- 
out a  thermometer,  —  if  the  teacher  be  habituated  to  live 
in  the  open  air  ;  if  he  be  healthy,  vigorous,  and  young ; 
if  he  walk  a  mile  or  several  miles  to  school ;  and  espe- 
cially if  he  keep  upon  his  feet  during  school-hours  ;  — 
the  scholars  will  be  drilled  and  scolded  into  a  resignation 
to  great  suffering  from  cold.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
teacher  lead  a  sedentary  life  ;  if  his  health  be  feeble  ;  if 
he  step  into  the  schoolroom  from  a  neighboring  door,  he 
will,  perhaps  unconsciously,  create  an  artificial  summer 
about  himself,  and  subject  the  children  to  a  perilous  tran- 
sition in  temperature,  whenever  they  leave  his  tropical 
regions.  In  this  way,  a  child's  lungs  may  get  a  wound 
in  early  life,  which  neither  Cuba  nor  the  south  of  France 
can  ever  afterwards  heal.  A  selfish  or  inconsiderate  mas- 
ter will  burn  a  whole  roomful  of  children  during  the 
chill,  and  freeze  them  during  the  fever,  of  his  own  ague- 
fits.  They  must  parch  or  congeal,  as  he  shivers  or 
glows. 

It  should  be  remembered,  also,  that  even  the  thermom- 
eter ceases  to  be  a  guide,  except  in  pure  air.  When  pure 
air  enters  the  lungs,  it  evolves  heat.  Its  oxygen  carries  on 
the  process  (supposed  to  be  combustion)  necessary  for 
that  purpose.  This  keeps  our  bodies  warm.  It  is  the 
reason  why  the  blood  remains  regularly  at  a  temperature 
of  ninety-eight  degrees,  though  the  air  by  which  we  are 
surrounded  rises  to  that  heat  but  a  few  times  in  a  year. 
The  a-'r  constantly  supplies  to  the  body,  through  the  me- 

VOL.   I.  29 


450          EEPOBT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

dium  of  the  lungs,  the  heat  which  it  is  constantly  ab- 
stracting by  contact  with  its  surface.  But  it  is  only 
through  the  agency  of  the  oxygen,  or  life-sustaining  por- 
tion of  the  air,  that  this  heat  is  supplied.  A  thermome- 
ter, however,  is  insensible  to  this  difference.  It  will  in- 
dicate the  same  degree  of  heat  in  azote,  i.e.,  iu  that  por- 
tion of  the  air  which  will  not  sustain  life,  as  in  oxygen ; 
although  a  man  immersed  in  azote  at  seventy  or  eighty 
degrees  would  die  of  cold,  if  he  did  not  of  suffocation. 
I  reiterate  the  first  position,  therefore,  that  even  a  ther- 
mometer ceases  to  be  a  guide,  except  in  pure  air. 

Ordinarily,  we  can  undergo  a  change  of  a  few  degrees 
in  temperature,  without  danger  or  serious  inconvenience  ; 
but  there  is  a  limit,  beyond  which  the  change  becomes 
perilous  and  even  fatal.  Suppose  in  a  school,  having  a 
winter  term  of  only  four  months,  and  consisting  of  but  fifty 
scholars,  one-quarter  of  an  hour  in  a  day,  on  a'n  average,  is 
lost  for  all  purposes  of  study,  in  consequence  of  the  too  great 
heat  or  cold  of  the  room  ;  the  aggregate  loss,  allowing  six 
hours  to  a  day,  will  be  two  hundred  days,  or  more  than 
eight  months.  And  yet,  in  many  of  our  schools,  half  the 
day,  for  all  purposes  of  improvement,  is,  by  this  cause 
alone,  substantially  lost. 

Every  keeper  of  a  greenhouse  regulates  its  heat  by  a 
thermometer.  The  northern  blasts  which  come  down 
upon  the  blossoms  of  a  farmer's  orchard  or  garden  chill 
him  as  much  as  them.  When  shall  we  apply  the  same 
measure  of  wisdom  to  the  welfare  of  children  as  to  that 
of  fruits  and  vegetables  ?  I  am  told  by  physicians,  that 
from  sixty-five  to  seventy  degrees  is  a  proper  temperature 
for  a  room.  Something,  however,  must  depend  upon  the 
habits  of  the  children.  In  cities,  there  is  generally  less 
exposure  to  cold  than  in  the  country  ;  and  factory  chil- 
dren would  suffer  from  cold,  when  those  employed  in  the 


ON   SCHOOLHOUSES  451 

outdoor  occupations  of  agriculture  would  be  comfortably 
warm.* 

*  We  give  below  two  letters,  one  from  Col.  JENKINS,  an  experienced 
architect  in  the  City  of  Boston,  the  other  from  Dr.  WOODWARD,  the 
Superintendent  of  the  State  Lunatic  Hospital  at  Worcester,  on  the  subject 
of  the  construction  of  schoolhouses.  The  suggestions  will  be  found  very 
important.  Though  published  in  the  8th  No.  of  our  Journal,  we  deem 
them  worthy  of  a  re-insertion  here.  —  ED. 

"Boston,  Jan.  21,  1839. 

"Dear  Sir, — Your  favor  of  the  19th  is  just  received.  In  answer  to 
your  question, '  whether  it  is  a  healthful  way  of  finishing  rooms,  to  plaster 
them  upon  a  solid  brick  wall,  without  furring,'  I  think,  in  a  word,  that  it 
is  not. 

"  It  is  almost,  perhaps  quite,  impossible  that  walls  will  not  be  penetrated 
by  water,  and  conduct  it  through  to  the  inner  surface ;  some  expedients 
have  been  adopted,  in  order  to  obviate  this  evil  —  as  in  prisons  and  hos- 
pitals, where  it  is  unsafe  to  attach  any  finish  to  the  walls,  which  could  be 
removed  by  the  inmates,  and  made  the  instruments  of  mischief  in  their 
hands.  One  method  has  been,  to  construct  the  walls  with  an  interstice,  or 
separation  in  the  wall,  between  the  outer  and  inner  courses  of  the  brick- 
work, when  made  of  brick,  and  on  the  same  principle  when  of  stone. 
The  objections  to  this  are  obvious.  Unless  the  walls  are  made  mueh 
thicker  than  otherwise  necessary,  their  strength  is  materially  lessened,  and 
their  liability  to  be  penetrated  by  the  weather  proportionably  increased. 
The  outer  and  inner  parts  of  the  wall  must  be  banded  together  by  separate 
stones  or  bricks,  which,  in  themselves,  are  conductors  of  moisture;  the 
vacuum  also  is  liable  to  be  filled  with  rubbish  or  other  nuisances.  I  sup- 
pose your  inquiry  has  reference  more  especially  to  schoolrooms,  and  yon 
will  permit  me  to  remark,  that  walls  plastered  upon  the  brick- work,  without 
furring,  are  not  only  liable  to  dampness,  but  always  cold,  and,  next  to  iron  or 
marble,  conductors  of  heat.  Now,  the  youth  in  school  are  always  allowed, 
and  much  enjoy  and  improve,  recesses  for  play  and  exercise ;  they  return 
to  their  studies,  glowing  with  a  brisk  circulation  of  vital  warmth,  and  it  is 
clear,  if  in  this  state  they  come  in  contact  with  such  a  wall  or  any  other 
powerful  conductor,  a  sudden  change  is  produced,  and  the  subject  is  injured 
in  health.  Add  to  this,  the  uncomfortableness  of  such  a  wall :  —  it  is  also 
cheerless  and  unpleasant,  and  nothing  of  this  kind  should  come  in  contact 
with  the  mental  or  physical  sense  of  the  student.  Will  you  pardon  me, 
sir,  if  I  mention  also,  though  aside  from  your  inquiries,  that  the  proportion* 
and  ventilation  of  schoolrooms  are  of  vast  moment  to  the  well-being  and 
improvement  of  the  pupil?  I  think  there  is  native  taste  in  every  we.U- 
baiunced  mind,  though  uneducated;  whatever,  therefore,  is  brought  m 


452  REPORT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

SIZE. 

• 

The  next  thing  in  point  of  importance  in  regard  to  a 
schoolhouse  is  its  dimensions.  In  almost  every  thing 

constant  contact  with  that  of  the  learner,  should  be  symmetrical  and  agree- 
able. 

"  The  gas  which  is  generated  in  assemblies  of  youth  will  arise  and 
escape  through  attic  ventilators,  while  that  produced  by  adults  is  more 
dense,  and  of  such  a  nature  as  to  require  apertures  below  to  allow  its  escape. 
These  last  hints  are  gratuitous,  but  your  efforts  in  the  cause  of  Education 
will  lead  you  to  favor  any  auxiliary,  however  humble. 

"  I  remain,  sir,  very  respectfully,  your  ob't  serv't, 

"  J.  JENKINS." 

"  Worcester,  Feb.  27, 1839. 

"  Dear  Sir,  —  I  received  your  favor  of  the  25th  instant,  in  which  you 
propose  the  inquiry,  'whether  you  think  it  a  safe  or  proper  mode  of  con- 
structing brick  buildings,  to  plaster  the  inside  of  the  exterior  walls,  directly 
upon  the  bricks,  or  without  furring.' 

"  Many  persons  object  to  brick  houses,  because  they  are  damp  ;  others 
think  them  colder  than  houses  built  of  wood.  The  reason  for  both  ob- 
•jections  lies  in  the  fact,  that  many  houses  are  plastered  on  the  brick  walls. 
It'  the  walls  of  a  brick  house  are  furred  or  built  hollow,  they  are  nearly  or 
quite  as  dry  as  a  house  built  of  wood,  and  quite  as  warm. 

"  A  brick  wall,  eight  inches  thick,  is  rarely  so  tight  as  to  exclude  the 
external  air  or  the  rain  in  a  driving  storm,  and  of  course  should  never  be 
plastered  on  the  inside,  but  be  furred  so  as  to  leave  a  space  for  air  between 
the  wall  and  plastering.  All  brick  walls,  but  particularly  thick  ones,  are 
generally  colder  than  the  atmosphere  of  the  rooms,  and  will  transmit  the 
heat  so  rapidly  as  to  form  a  condensation  of  the  vapor  of  the  atmosphere 
upon  them,  rendering  them  damp,  and  this  moisture  frequently  accumulates 
in  such  quantity  as  to  be  visible  in  drops  and  currents  upon  the  wall.  Such 
houses  can  neither  be  comfortable  nor  healthful. 

"  If  the  walls  of  a  house  are  not  constructed  so  as  to  be  hollow,  or 
have  a  vacant  space  of  an  inch  or  two  in  the  brick-work,  they  ought  to  be 
furred,  lathed,  and  plastered,  so  as  to  leave  a  space  for  air  between  the  brick 
and  plastering,  which  makes  the  house  both  warmer  and  dryer  than  it  can 
otherwise  be  made. 

"  Some  years  ago,  I  was  frequently  in  a  very  handsome  brick  house, 
built  at  great  expense,  but  the  exterior  walls  were  plastered  on  the  brick. 
It  had  many  occupants,  all  of  whom  concurred  in  the  statement,  that  the 
house  was  damp,  and  that  articles  of  clothing,  in  closets  no  way  connected 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  453 

heretofore  written  on  this  subject,  the  size  of  the  school- 
room, in  proportion  to  the  number  of  scholars,  has  been  a 
very  leading  topic.  And  certainly,  if  there  be  no  special 
means  provided  for  changing  the  air  in  the  room,  the  im- 
portance of  liberal  dimensions  cannot  be  exaggerated. 
But  if,  instead  of  forcing  foul  air  back  again  and  again 
into  the  children's  lungs,  we  permit  Nature  to  perform  her 
gratuitous  and  beneficent  labor,  by  carrying  it  beyond 
their  reach,  as  soon  as  it  has  once  been  respired,  then  one 
main  object  of  increasing  the  size  of  the  room  is  already 
accomplished.  The  great  end  of  a  supply  of  heathful  air 
being  secured,  the  dimensions  of  the  room  are  left  to  be 
determined  by  other  considerations.  These  are,  the  con- 
venient arrangement  of  the  seats,  so  that  the  teacher  can 
survey  the  whole  school  with  a  single  look ;  so  that  each 
scholar  can  have  an  easy  access  to  his  own  seat,  without 
disturbing  or  being  disturbed  by  any  other ;  and  so  as 
to  remove  the  temptations  to  communicate,  to  play,  or  to 
aggress. 

In  regard  to  the  size  of  the  rooms,  it  may  be  observed, 
generally,  that  in  addition  to  the  room  requisite  for  seats 
and  desks,  as  described  below,  there  should  be  an  open 
space  all  round  the  walls,  at  least  two  feet  and  a  half  in 
width,  besides  room  for  common  recitations,  and  for  the 
teacher's  desk.  Seats  may  be  attached  to  the  walls  for 
the  accommodation  of  visitors,  or  for  the  scholars,  should 
it  ever  be  desirable,  for  any  purpose,  to  arrange  them  in 
a  continuous  line.  Movable  benches  may  be  provided, 


with  the  outer  walls  of  the  house,  would  become  mouldy,  and  spoil,  if  not 
attended  to  frequently ;  and  that  all  clothing  and  bedding  in  rooms  not 
constantly  occupied  would  be  so  damp  as  to  be  quite  unsafe  and  unfit 
for  use. 

"  Yours  very  truly  and  affectionately, 

"  SAMUEL  B.  WOODWARD." 


454          EEPORT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

—  instead  of  seats  fastened  to  the  wall,  —  to  be  taken 
away,  when  not  wanted  for  use,  and  so  to  leave  that  space 
entirely  unoccupied.  Joseph  Lancaster,  in  making  ar- 
rangements for  great  numbers  of  the  children  of  the  poor, 
where  cheapness  was  a  main  object,  allows  nine  feet  area, 
on  the  floor,  to  each  scholar.  His  rooms  were  fifteen 
or  twenty  feet  high.  If  only  fifteen  feet  high,  an  area 
of  nine  feet  would  give  one  hundred  and  thirty-five  cubic 
feet  of  space  to  each  scholar;  and  one  hundred  and 
thirty-five  cubic  feet  in  a  room  ten  feet  high  would  give 
to  each  scholar  an  area  four  feet  in  length  and  almost 
three  feet  and  a  half  in  width.  Even  at  this  rate,  a 
family  of  six  persons  would  have  a  room  only  about  eight 
feet  by  ten. 

DESKS,  SEATS,  &c. 

It  seems  to  be  a  very  prevalent  opinion,  at  the  present 
day,  amongst  all  professional  teachers,  that  seats  on  a 
horizontal  floor  are  preferable  to  those  which  rise  on  the 
sides  or  at  the  end  of  a  room,  or  both,  in  the  form  of  an 
amphitheatre.  And  it  is  obviously  a  great  fault  in  the 
construction  of  a  room,  if,  when  a  class  is  brought  upon 
the  floor  to  recite,  the  teacher  is  obliged  to  turn  his  back 
upon  the  school,  when  he  looks  at  the  class,  or  upon  the 
class  when  he  looks  at  the  school.  A  level  floor  also 
increases  the  space  for  air,  and  as  the  room  is  warmed 
downwards,  it  makes  the  temperature  more  equable.  The 
seats  with  desks  should  be  arranged  in  parallel  lines, 
lengthwise  of  the  room,  with  aisles  between,  each  seat  to 
accommodate  one  scholar  only.  Although  it  would  be 
better  that  they  should  be  movable,  yet  as  this  cannot, 
perhaps,  ordinarily  be  done  for  district  schools,  the  front 
side  of  one  seat  may  be  the  back  of  the  next  in  the  row. 
Eighteen  inches  is,  perhaps,  a  suitable  width  for  the  aisles. 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  455 

Each  desk  should  be  two  feet  long,  and  not  less  than  one 
foot  and  six  inches  wide.  A  width  of  one  foot  and  nine 
inches  would  be  better.  In  some  houses,  the  seats  con- 
nected with  single  desks  are  one  foot  square,  and  are 
placed  behind  the  middle  of  the  desks  ;  in  others  the 
seats  are  one  foot  wide  and  as  long  as  the  desks.  It  may 
sometimes  be  desirable  to  place  two  scholars  temporarily 
on  the  same  seat,  as  for  the  purpose  of  reading  from  the 
same  book.  The  former  arrangement  would  make  this 
impracticable.  The  children  will  sit  more  easily  and 
more  upright,  if  the  back  of  the  seats  slope  a  little  from 
them,  at  the  shoulder-blades  ;  and  also,  if  the  seats  them- 
selves incline  a  little  —  the  front  part  being  a  little  tho 
highest.  The  forward  part  of  the  desk  should  be  level 
for  about  three  or  four  inches.  The  residue  should  have 
a  slight  inclination.  A  slope  of  an  inch  and  a  half  in  a 
foot  would,  probably,  be  sufficient.  It  should  not  be  so 
great,  as  that  books  and  slates  would  slide  off.  For  the 
deposit  of  books,  and  so  forth,  there  may  be  a  shelf  under 
the  desk,  or  the  desk  may  be  a  box,  with  a  cover,  hung 
upon  hinges  for  a  lid.  The  first  method  supersedes  the 
necessity  of  raising  a  lid,  by  which  books,  pencils,  and  so 
forth,  are  sometimes  thrown  upon  the  floor  or  upon  the 
front  neighbor.  The  shelf,  however,  is  far  less  convenient, 
and  the  contents  are  liable  to  be  perpetually  dropped  out. 
The  bo"x  and  lid,  on  the  whole,  seem  much  preferable,  the 
sloping  part  of  the  cover  to  constitute  the  lid.  For  the 
security  of  the  desks,  locks  and  keys  are  sometimes  used. 
But  the  keys  will  occasionally  be  lost,  by  accident ;  and 
sometimes,  by  bad  scholars,  on  purpose.  Besides,  what 
appalling  images  throng  the  mind,  at  the  reflection,  that 
the  earliest  associations  of  children  in  regard  to  the 
security  of  property  amongst  themselves,  must  be  of  locks 
and  hiding-places,  instead  of  honesty  and  justice !  The 


456  REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY 

board  which  makes  the  front  of  one  seat  and  the  back  of 
the  next  should  rise,  perhaps  a  couple  of  inches,  above 
the  level  of  the  horizontal  part  of  the  desk,  to  prevent 
things  from  sliding  off  forwards.  Into  this  horizontal 
part  of  the  desk,  the  inkstands  may  be  let :  so  loosely, 
however,  as  to  allow  of  their  being  taken  out  to  be  filled  ; 
and  so  deep,  that  their  tops  will  be  on  a  level  with  the 
desks.  They  may  be  covered,  either  with  a  metallic  lid, 
resembling  a  butt  hinge,  to  rise  and  fall ;  or,  which  is 
better,  with  a  common  slide,  or  with  a  flat  circular  piece 
of  pewter,  having  a  stem  projecting  on  one  side,  like  the 
stem  of  a  watch,  through  which  a  nail  or  screw  may  be 
driven,  not  tightly,  but  so  that  the  cover  may  be  made  to 
slide  over  or  off  the  orifice  of  the  inkstand,  on  the  nail  or 
screw,  as  a  hinge. 

Instead  of  the  form  of  desks,  above  described,  I  have 
seen  some,  constructed  after  the  plan  of  Mr.  Alcott's 
Prize  Essay,  in  which  the  box  or  case  for  the  books,  and 
so  forth,  is  in  the  front  part  of  the  desk  ;  that  is,  in  the 
horizontal  and  not  the  sloping  part  of  the  desk  above 
described.  They  are  made  about  eight  inches  in  width, 
and  deep  enough  to  receive  the  largest  atlases,  slates,  and 
writing-books,  when  placed  edgewise,  for  which  purpose, 
an  inch  or  two  on  one  side  of  the  box  is  partitioned  off. 
The  lid  is  hung  on  hinges,  as  above  described,  and  when 
shut  forms  a  part  of  the  desk.* 

Last  year,  a  gentleman  in  Hartford,  Conn.,  offered  a 
handsome  premium  for  the  best  form  of  a  desk  for  schools. 
Several  plans  were  submitted  to  the  judges  selected  to 
award  the  premium.  They  decided  in  favor  of  a  desk, 
designed  to  accommodate  two  scholars,  upon  one  seat. 

*  Mr.  Alcott's  Prize  Essay  may  be  found  at  the  end  of  the  second  vol. 
ume  of  the  Lectures,  published  by  the  American  Institute  of  Instruction,  in 
1831,  and  is  a  very  valuable  paper. 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSE8.  457 

The  desk  was  a  tight  box,  without  any  lid,  but  having  an 
oblong  opening,  at  each  end,  large  enough  to  admit  books, 
slates,  <fec.  In  this  way,  whatever  was  put  in  or  taken  out 
of  the  desk  would  be  exposed  to  the  view  of  the  teacher 
and  scholars. 

The  edge  of  the  desk  and  of  the  seat  should  be  in  the 
same  perpendicular  line.  This  will  not  allow  the  scholar 
to  stand  up  in  front  of  his  seat ;  but  if  the  seats  and  desks 
are  single,  he  can  stand  on  one  side  of  the  seat.  If 
the  seats  and  desks  are  designed  for  two  scholars,  then  the 
corner  of  each  scholar's  seat  may  be  cut  off,  as  in  the 
representation  below. 


Here  each  scholar  can  stand  up  in  the  corner  a,  or  sit 
upon  the  seat  b. 

In  regard  to  the  height  of  the  seats,  it  is  common  to 
give  exact  measurements.  But  inflexible  rules  will  never 
fit  varying  circumstances.  Some  schoolrooms  are  for 
females ;  others  for  boys  only.  In  factory  villages,  usu- 
ally, a  great  portion  of  the  scholars  are  young  ;  while,  in 
one  county  in  the  State,  great  numbers  of  the  males 
attending  school,  during  the  winter  term,  are  more  than 
sixteen  years  of  age.  To  follow  unvarying  rules,  there- 
fore, would  aggrieve  as  many  as  it  would  accommodate. 
But  the  principles  to  be  observed  are  few,  and  capable  of 
a  definite  exposition.  A  live  child  cannot  be  expected  to 
sit  still,  unless  he  has  a  support  to  his  back,  and  a  firm 
resting-place  for  his  feet.  As  a  scholar  sits  upright  in  his 
seat,  the  knee-joint  forming  a  right  angle,  and  the  feet 
being  planted  horizon  tally  on  the  floor,  no  pressure  what- 
ever should  come  upon  the  thigh-bone  where  it  crosses 


458  REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY 

the  edge  of  the  seat.  If  obliged  to  sit  upon  too  high  a 
seat,  a  foot-board  or  block  should  always  be  provided  for 
the  feet  to  rest  upon.  Children  sometimes  go  to  school 
at  an  age  when  many  of  their  bones  are  almost  as  limber 
as  a  green  with,  when  almost  any  one  of  the  numerous 
joints  in  the  body  may  be  loosened  or  distorted.  They 
go  almost  as  early,  as  when  the  Chinese  turn  their  chil- 
dren's feet  into  the  shape  of  horses'  hoofs ;  or  when  some 
tribes  of  Indians  make  their  children's  heads  as  square  as 
a  joiner's  box.  And,  at  this  period  of  life,  when  portions 
of  the  bones  are  but  little  more  than  cartilage,  and  the 
muscles  will  stretch  like  sheep's  leather,  the  question  is, 
whether  the  seats  shall  be  conformed  to  the  children,  or 
the  children  shall  be  deformed  to  the  seats.  I  wish  to 
fortify  myself  on  this  subject,  by  making  a  few  extracts 
from  a  lecture  on  Physical  Education,  by  that  celebrated 
surgeon,  Dr.  John  C.  Warren.  "When  children  are  sent 
to  school,  care  should  be  taken,  that  they  are  not  confined 
too  long.  Children  under  fourteen  should  not  be  kept  in 
school  more  than  six  or  seven  hours  in  a  day ;  and  this 
period  should  be  shortened  for  females.  It  is  expedient 
that  it  should  be  broken  into  many  parts,  so  as  to  avoid  a 
long  confinement  at  one  time.  Young  persons,  however 
well  disposed,  cannot  support  a  restriction  to  one  place 
and  one  posture.  Nature  resists  such  restrictions  ;  and 
if  enforced,  they  are  apt  to  create  disgust  with  the  means 
and  the  object.  Thus  children  learn  to  hate  studies,  that 
might  be  rendered  agreeable,  and  they  take  an  aversion 
to  instructors,  who  would  otherwise  be  interesting  to 
them. 

"The  postures  they  assume,  while  seated  at  their 
studies,  are  not  indifferent.  They  should  be  frequently 
warned  against  the  practice  of  maintaining  the  head  and 
neck  long  in  a  stooping  position,  and  the  disposition  to 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  459 

it  should  be  lessened  by  giving  a  proper  elevation  and 
slope  to  the  desk,  and  the  seat  should  have  a  support  or 
back. 

"  The  influence  of  an  upright  form  and  open  breast  has 
been  sufficiently  explained  ;  and  what  may  be  done  to 
acquire  these  qualities,  is  shown  by  many  remarkable 
facts,  one  of  which  I  will  mention.  For  a  great  number 
of  years,  it  has  been  the  custom  in  France  to  give  to 
young  females  of  the  earliest  age,  the  habit  of  holding 
back  the  shoulders,  and  thus  expanding  the  chest.  From 
the  observation  of  anatomists,  lately  made,  it  appears  that 
the  clavicle  or  collar  bone  is  actually  longer  in  females 
of  the  French  nation,  than  in  those  of  the  English.  The 
French  have  succeeded  in  the  development  of  a  part,  in 
a  way  that  adds  to  health  and  beauty,  and  increases  a 
characteristic,  that  distinguishes  the  human  being  from 
the  brute. 

"  While  all  of  us  are  desirous  of  possessing  the  excel- 
lent qualities  of  strength,  hardiness,  and  beauty,  how 
defective  are  our  own  systems  of  education  in  the  means 
of  acquiring  them ! 

"  In  the  course  of  my  observations,  I  have  been  able 
to  satisfy  myself,  that  about  half  the  young  females, 
brought  up  as  they  are  at  present,  undergo  some  visible 
and  obvious  change  of  structure  ;  that  a  considerable 
number  are  the  subjects  of  great  and  permanent  devia- 
tions ;  and  that  not  a  few  entirely  lose  their  health  from 
the  manner  in  which  they  are  reared. 

"  I  feel  warranted  in  the  assertion,  that,  of  the  well- 
educated  females,  within  my  sphere  of  experience,  about 
one-half  are  affected  with  some  degree  of  distortion  of 
spine. 

"  The  lateral  distortion  of  the  spine  is  almost  wholly 
confined  to  females,  and  is  scarcely  ever  found  existing 


460          REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY 

in  the  other  sex.  The  difference  results  from  a  difference 
of  habits  during  the  school  education.  The  immediate 
cause  of  the  lateral  curve  of  the  spine  to  the  right  is  the 
elevation  and  action  of  the  right  arm  in  drawing  and 
writing." 

Much  more  might  be  quoted,  apposite  to  this  important 
subject.  It  seems  only  necessary  to  add,  that  nothing  so 
essentially  tends  to  aggravate  these  evils,  as  the  want  of 
a  proper  resting-place  for  the  feet.  Let  any  man  try  the 
experiment,  and  see  how  long  he  can  sit  in  an  upright 
posture,  on  a  narrow  bench  or  seat,  without  being  able  to 
reach  the  floor  with  his  feet,  and  consequently  witli  the 
whole  weight  of  his  feet,  boots,  and  the  lower  parts  of 
the  lirnbs,  acting  with  the  power  of  a  lever  across  the 
middle  of  the  thigh-bones.  Yet,  to  this  position,  hun- 
dreds of  children  in  this  State  are  regularly  confined, 
month  after  month ;  and  while  condemned  to  this  unnat- 
ural posture,  Nature  inflicts  her  punishments  of  insup- 
portable uneasiness  and  distress  on  every  joint  and  muscle 
if  they  do  sit  still,  and  the  teacher  inflicts  his  punishments 
if  they  do  not.  A  gentleman,  extensively  known  to  the 
citizens  of  this  State  for  the  benevolence  of  his  charac- 
ter, and  the  candor  of  his  statements,  who,  for  the  last 
twenty  years,  has  probably  visited  more  of  our  Common 
Schools  than  any  other  person  in  the  State,  writes  to  me 
as  follows :  "  I  have  no  hesitation  in  repeating  what  I 
have  often  publicly  declared,  that,  from  the  bad  construc- 
tion of  our  schoolhouses,  there  is  more  physical  suffering 
endured  by  our  children  in  them  than  by  prisoners  in  our 
jails  and  prisons."  *  The  following  is  an  extract  of  a 
letter,  addressed  to  a  "Common- School  Convention"  held 
at  Northampton  in  February,  1837,  by  Dr.  Joseph  H. 
Flint,  of  that  place :  "  For  want  of  attention  to  the 

*  The  Rev.  Gardiner  B.  Perry,  of  Bradford. 


ON   SCHOOLHOUSES.  461 

subject,"  (the  construction  of  schoolhouses,)  "  I  have  the 
means  of  knowing,  that  there  has  been  annually  loss  of 
life,  destruction  of  health,  and,  in  numberless  instances, 
anatomical  deformities,  that  render  life  hardly  worth 
having.  In  the  construction  of  schoolhouses,  there  are 
many  considerations,  involving  the  comfort,  and  health, 
and  life,  of  the  young,"  &c. 

I  am  informed  by  surgeons  and  physicians,  that  a  pupil, 
when  writing,  should  face  the  writing-desk  squarely.  This 
position  avoids  all  unequal  lateral  pressure  upon  the  spinal 
column,  and  of  course  all  unequal  tension  of  the  muscles 
on  either  side  of  it.  It  also  interferes  least  with  the  free 
play  of  the  thoracic  viscera,  which  is  a  point  of  great 
importance.  The  edge  of  the  desk  should  then  be  an 
inch  or  two  above  the  bend  of  the  elbow,  as  the  arm 
hangs  nearly  by  the  side.  Any  slight  want  of  exact 
adjustment  can  be  corrected,  by  extending  the  elbow 
farther  from,  or  bringing  it  nearer  to,  the  body. 

The  height  of  the  seats  and  desks  should  of  course  be 
graduated,  to  fit  the  different  sizes  of  the  scholars ;  the 
smallest  scholars  sitting  nearest  the  teacher's  desk. 

The  arrangement  of  seats  without  desks,  for  small 
scholars,  when  needed,  is  too  obvious  to  require  any  expla- 
nation. Their  proper  position  will  depend  upon  the 
other  arrangements  of  the  schoolroom.  Long  benches, 
having  separate  chair-shaped  seats,  but  with  a  continuous 
back,  are  sometimes  used. 

The  place  for  hanging  hats,  bonnets,  and  so  forth,  will 
also  depend  upon  the  general  construction  of  the  house. 
It  should  be  such  as  to  encourage  habits  of  neatness  and 
order. 

The  instructor's  desk  should  be  upon  a  platform,  raised 
so  high  as  to  give  him  a  view  of  the  persons  of  the  pupils 
above  their  desks.  When  the  school  is  not  large,  it 


462          REPORT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

should  be  at  the  end  of  the  room.  It  should  overlook 
the  play-ground.  Cases  for  the  deposit  and  preservation 
of  the  apparatus  and  library  should  be  near  the  desk, 
except  where  a  separate  apartment  is  provided.  A  teacher 
without  apparatus,  —  however  numerous  may  be  hi* 
books,  —  is  like  a  mechanic  with  but  half  a  set  of 
tools. 

The  average  number  of  scholars  in  the  schools  in  Mas- 
sachusetts is  about  fifty.  When  the  school  is  large, 
there  should  be  a  separation  of  the  older  from  the 
younger  children,  and  the  latter,  at  least,  placed  under 
the  care  of  a  female  teacher.  The  opinion  is  almost 
universal,  in  this  State,  that  female  teaching  for  young 
children  is.  in  every  respect,  superior  to  male.  If  the 
number  of  the  older  scholars  be  large,  there  should  be  a 
separate  recitation-room,  and  a  door  and  an  entry  for  the 
entrance  and  accommodation  of  each  sex. 

In  very  large  schools,  it  may  be  thought  expedient  to 
have  desks,  sufficiently  long  to  accommodate  six  or  more 
scholars,  with  chairs,  fastened  to  the  floor,  for  seats,  and 
a  space  between  the  chairs  and  the  next  tier  of  desks,  for 
passing  in  and  out.  In  such  cases,  the  desks  may  be 
placed  longitudinally,  and  the  teacher's  platform  for  him- 
self and  assistants  extend  the  whole  length  of  the  room, 
in  front  of  them. 

I  now  come  to  a  subject,  which  I  think  of  primary 
importance.  It  is  the  almost  universal  practice  of  teach- 
ers to  call  their  classes  out  upon  the  floor  for  reading  and 
recitation.  If  there  were  no  other  reason,  the  change  of 
position  it  gives  them  is  a  sufficient  one.  The  seats  in 
schoolrooms  are,  almost  without  exception,  so  arranged, 
that  these  proceedings  take  place  in  full  view  of  all  the 
scholars ;  and  they  are  often  so,  that  when  the  teacher 
turns  his  face  towards  the  class,  he  must  turn  his  back 


ON   SCHOOLHOUSES.  463 

upon  the  school.  The  idle  and  disorderly  seize  upon  such 
occasions  to  violate  the  rules  of  the  school.  This  they 
can  generally  do  with  perfect  impunity.  They  can  screen 
themselves  from  observation,  by  moving  the  head  so  that 
an  intermediate  scholar  shall  intercept  the  teachqr's  view; 
or  by  holding  up  a  book,  slate,  or  atlas  before  themselves, 
and  under  such  shield,  can  whisper,  eat,  or  grimace. 
But  the  effect  upon  the  attentive  is  worse  than  upon  the 
idle  ;  and  its  tendency  is  to  turn  the  former  into  the 
latter.  The  eye  is  the  quickest  of  all  the  senses,  and 
the  minds  of  children  always  yield  instant  obedience  to 
it,  and  follow  wherever  it  leads.  Every  one  must  have 
observed,  that  when  a  class  is  reciting  in  presence  of  a 
school,  if  any  thing  unusual  or  incongruous  transpires, 
such  as  the  falling  of  a  book  or  slate,  or  the  ludicrous 
pronunciation  of  a  word,  the  attention  of  every  scholar 
is  broken  off  from  his  study.  The  blunder  or  stammer- 
ing of  a  four-years-old  child,  learning  letters,  will  strike 
every  hand  in  the  school  off  its  work.  While  the  senses, 
and  especially  the  eye,  are  bringing  vivid  images  to  the 
mind,  it  is  almost  impossible  for  men,  and  quite  so  for 
children,  to  deny  them  access.  Much  of  what  the  world 
admires  as  talent,  is  only  a  power  of  fixing  attention  upon 
an  object,  and  of  looking  steadily  at  it  until  the  whole  of 
it  is  seen.  The  power  of  concentration  is  one  of  the 
most  valuable  of  intellectual  attainments,  because  it  is 
the  principal  means  of  achieving  any  other;  and  the 
pupil,  with  but  little  positive  knowledge,  in  whom  this 
has  become  a  habit  of  mind,  has  a  far  higher  chance  of 
success  in  any  walk  of  life,  than  one  with  a  thousand 
times  the  knowledge,  but  without  the  habit.  This  power 
is  an  acquired  one  as  much  as  any  other,  and  as  suscep- 
tible as  any  other  of  improvement.  But  overtasking  de- 
stroys it,  just  as  overloading  the  limbs  crushes,  instead  of 


464          REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY 

strengthening  them.  Reference  must  be  had,  therefore,  to 
the  ordinary  powers  of  children's  minds,  or  we  shall  have 
distraction  instead  of  abstraction.  Much  fixedness  of 
thought  ought  not  to  be  expected  from  the  giddiness  and 
volatility  of  children.  In  rooms  of  the  common  construc- 
tion, I  do  not  believe  that  more  than  one-half  of  the  time  is 
available  for  study.  Not  only,  therefore,  ought  the  desire 
of  strengthening  this  power  to  be  inspired,  but  the  ar- 
rangement of  the  room  and  the  tactics  of  the  school 
should  be  made  to  contribute,  unconsciously  to  the  chil- 
dren, to  the  same  effect.  Although  the  habits  of  the 
mind  are  the  main  thing  to  be  regarded  in  education,  yet 
it  cannot  be  denied  that  one  hour  of  concentrated  atten- 
tion on  any  subject  is  worth  more  than  a  week's  listless 
hovering  and  floating  around  it.  Hence,  where  there  is 
no  separate  recitation-room,  (which,  however,  every  large 
school  ought  to  have,)  the  area  for  that  purpose  should 
be  behind  the  scholars  who  remain  in  their  seats.  The 
teacher  can  then  take  such  a  position  at  the  end  of  the 
room,  opposite  his  desk,  as  to  command  at  once  a  view 
of  the  reciting  class  and  the  rest  of  the  school.  He  will 
then  see,  without  being  seen.  The  scholars  can  interpose 
nothing  between  themselves  and  him.  Every  scholar 
would  be  convinced,  by  strict  vigilance  on  the  part  of  the 
teacher,  during  the  first  week  of  the  school,  that  he  had 
no  power  of  violating  rules  without  detection.  They 
would,  therefore,  yield  to  the  necessity  of  the  case.  The 
temptation  would  die  with  the  opportunity  to  gratify  it. 
The  ear  only  of  the  scholars  would  be  solicited  to  notice 
the  voices  behind  them,  while  the  stronger  attraction  of 
visible  objects,  the  book,  the  slate,  the  map,  would  rivet 
eye  and  mind  upon  the  subjects  of  study.  This  slight 
interruption  in  the  rear,  while  the  mind  enjoyed  such 
advantages  for  overcoming  it,  would  increase  its  power 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  465 

of  continuous  attention,  and  enable  it,  in  after-life,  to 
cany  on  processes  of  thought  in  the  midst  of  conversa- 
tion or  other  disturbing  occurrences.  Still,  it  is  thought, 
that  the  teacher's  desk  should  always  face  those  of 
the  scholars ;  so  that  when  a  class  recites  in  the  seats, 
when  the  whole  school  joins  in  any  exercise,  or  when  they 
are  to  be  addressed,  each  party  should  be  able  to  see  the 
other  face  to  face.  The  social  principle  will  never,  other- 
wise, flow  freely. 

LOCATION    OF    SCHOOLHOUSES. 

All  philosophers  agree  that  external  objects  affect  tem- 
per and  character.  If  their  influences  are  imperceptible, 
the  results  will  be  so  much  the  surer,  because  impercep- 
tible influences  are  never  resisted.  Because  children 
cannot  analyze  and  state  in  propositions  the  feelings, 
which  outward  circumstances  breathe  into  their  suscepti- 
ble minds,  it  is  no  proof  that  they  are  not  undergoing 
insensible  changes.  Everybody  recognizes  the  silent  influ- 
ences of  external  nature,  if  exerted  only  for  a  few  days, 
in  the  case  of  those  religious  sects  who  use  the  forest  for 
a  temple.  Fatal  contagions  enter  through  the  skin  or 
lungs,  without  sending  forward  any  herald.  Subtile 
influences  upon  such  delicate  tissues  as  the  nerves  and 
brain  are  not  seen  in  the  process,  but  only  in  the  result. 
But  experience  and  reason  enable  us  to  foresee  such  con- 
sequences, and,  foreseeing,  to"control  them.  Adults  alone 
can  perform  such  a  duty.  If  they  neglect  it,  the  children 
must  suffer. 

It  has  been  often  objected  to  the  people  of  our  State, 
that  they  insist  upon  having  the  schoolhouse  in  the  geo- 
graphical centre  of  the  district.  And,  other  things  being 
equal,  surely  it  ought  to  be  in  the  centre.  But  the  house 
is  erected  for  the  children,  and  not  for  the  acres ;  and 

VOL.  I.  80 


466  REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY 

the  inconvenience  of  going  fifty  or  even  eighty  rods 
farther  is  not  to  be  compared  to  the  benefit  of  spending 
a  whole  day  in  a  healthful,  comfortable,  pleasing  spot,  — 
one  full  of  salutary  influences  upon  the  feelings  and 
temper.  Place  a  schoolhouse  in  a  bleak  and  unsheltered 
situation,  and  the  difficulty  of  attaining  and  preserving  a 
proper  degree  of  warmth  is  much  increased  ;  put  it  upon 
a  sandy  plain,  without  shade  or  shelter  from  the  sun,  and 
the  whole  school  is  subjected  to  the  evils  of  heat  and  dust ; 
plant  it  in  low  marshy  grounds,  and  it  exposes  to  colds 
or  to  more  permanent  diseases  of  the  lungs,  and  impairs 
habits  of  cleanliness  both  in  dress  and  person  ;  make  one 
side  of  it  the  boundary  of  a  public  road,  and  the  persons 
of  the  children  are  endangered  by  the  travel,  when  out, 
and  their  attention,  when  in,  called  off  the  lesson  by 
every  passer-by ;  place  it  on  a  little  remnant  or  delta  of 
land,  where  roads  encircle  it  on  all  sides,  without  any 
place  of  seclusion  from  the  public  gaze,  and  the  modesty 
of  nature  will  be  overlaid  with  habits  of  indecorum ;  and 
a  want  of  decency,  enforced  upon  boys  and  girls,  will 
become  physical  and  moral  turpitude  in  men  and  women. 
But  build  it  where  some  sheltering  hill  or  wood  mitigates 
the  inclemency  of  winter  ;  where  a  neighboring  grove 
tempers  the  summer  heat,  furnishing  cool  and  shady 
walks  :  remove  it  a  little  from  the  public  highway,  and 
from  buildings  where  noisy  and  clattering  trades  are 
carried  on  ;  and,  above  all,  rescue  it  from  sound  or 
sight  of  all  resorts  for  license  and  dissipation,  and  a 
sensibility  to  beauty,  a  purity  of  mind,  a  sentiment  of 
decency  and  propriety,  will  be  developed  and  fostered, 
and  the  chances  of  elevated  feelings  and  correct  conduct 
in  after-life  will  be  increased  manifold.  Habits  of  mental 
order  and  propriety  are  best  cherished  amidst  external 
order  and  propriety.  It  is  a  most  beautiful  trait  in  the 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  467 

character  of  children,  that  they  take  the  keenest  delight 
in  the  simplest  pleasures.  Their  desires  do  not  tax  com- 
merce for  its  luxuries,  nor  exhaust  wealth  for  its  embel- 
lishments. Such  pleasures  as  are  imparted  by  the  cheer- 
ful light  and  the  quickening  air,  by  the  wayside  flowers, 
the  running  stream,  or  the  music  of  birds,  are  sufficient 
for  the  more  gentle  and  pensive  ;  and  the  impetuous  and 
exuberant  of  spirit  only  want  a  place  to  let  off  the 
redundant  activity  of  their  arms  and  legs.  And  how 
cheaply  can  these  sources  of  gratification  be  purchased ! 
Sometimes  a  little  of  the  spirit  of  compromise ;  some- 
times a  little  forgetfulness  of  strifes  among  the  parents, 
engendered  on  other  subjects,  would  secure  to  the  children 
the  double  boon  of  utility  and  enjoyment.  Yet  how  often 
are  the  unoffending  children  ground  between  the  col- 
lisions of  their  parents ! 

It  seems  not  unconnected  with  this  subject  to  inquire, 
whether,  in  many  places  out  of  our  cities,  a  plan  may  not 
be  adopted  to  give  greater  efficiency  to  the  means  now 
devoted  to  common-school  education.  The  population  of 
many  towns  is  so  situated  as  conveniently  to  allow  a  gra- 
dation of  the  schools.  For  children  under  the  age  of 
eight  or  ten  years,  about  a  mile  seems  a  proper  limit,  be- 
yond which  they  should  not  be  required  to  travel  to  school. 
On  this  supposition,  one  house,  as  centrally  situated  as 
circumstances  will  permit,  would  accommodate  the  popu- 
lation upon  a  territory  of  four  square  miles,  or,  which  is 
the  same  thing,  two  miles  square.  But  a  child  above  that 
age  can  go  two  miles  to  school,  or  even  rather  more,  with- 
out serious  inconvenience.  There  are  many  persons,  whose 
experience  attests,  that  they  never  enjoyed  better  health, 
or  made  greater  progress,  than  when  they  went  two  miles 
and  a  half  or  three  miles,  daily,  to  school.  Supposing, 
however,  the  most  remote  scholars  to  live  only  at  about  the 


468 


distance  of  two  miles  from  the  school,  one  house  will  then 
accommodate  all  the  older  children  upon  a  territory  of 
about  sixteen  square  miles,  or  four  miles  square.  Under 
such  an  arrangement,  while  there  were  four  schools  in  a 
territory  of  four  miles  square,  i.  e.  sixteen  square  miles, 
for  the  younger  children,  there  would  be  one  central 
school  for  the  older.  Suppose  there  is  $600  to  be  divided 
amongst  the  inhabitants  of  this  territory  of  sixteen  square 
miles,  or  $150  for  each  of  the  four  districts.  Suppose 
further,  that  the  average  wages  for  male  teachers  is  $25, 
and  for  female  $12.50,  per  month.  If,  according  to  the 
present  system,  four  male  teachers  are  employed  for  the 
winter  term,  and  four  female  for  the  summer,  each  of 
the  summer  and  winter  schools  may  be  kept  four  months. 
The  money  would  then  be  exhausted ;  i.  e.  four  months 
summer,  at  $12.50  =$50,  and  four  months  winter,  at  $25 
=  $100;  — both  =  $150.  But  according  to  the  plan 
suggested,  the  same  money  would  pay  for  six  months' 
summer  school,  instead  of  four,  in  each  of  the  four  dis- 
tricts, and  for  a  male  teacher's  school  eight  months,  at 
$35  a  month,  instead  of  four  months,  at  $25  a  month, 
and  would  then  leave  $20  in  the  treasury. 

4  miles. 


Territory  four  miles 
square,  or  of  six- 
teen square  miles. 


2  m. 

a 


a.  a.  a.  a.  District 
school-houses  for 
female  teachers. 

A.  Central  school- 
bouse  for  a  male 
teacher. 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  469 

By  this  plan,  the  great  superiority  of  female  over  male 
training,  for  children  under  eight,  ten,  or  twelve  years  of 
age,  would  be  secured  ;  the  larger  scholars  would  be  sep- 
arated from  the  smaller,  and  thus  the  great  diversity  of 
studies  and  of  classes  in  the  same  school,  which  now  crum- 
bles the  teacher's  time  into  dust,  would  be  avoided  ;  the 
female  schools  would  be  lengthened  one-half;  the  length 
of  the  male  schools  would  be  doubled,  and  for  the  in- 
creased compensation,  a  teacher  of  fourfold  qualifications 
could  be  employed.  Undoubtedly,  in  many  towns,  upon 
the  Cape  or  among  the  mountains,  the  course  of  the  roads 
and  the  face  of  the  territory  would  present  insuperable 
obstacles  to  the  full  reduction  of  this  scheme  to  practice. 
But  it  is  as  unquestionable,  that  in  many  others  no  physical 
impediments  exist  to  its  immediate  adoption  ;  especially 
if  we  consider  the  legal  power  of  different  towns  to  unite 
portions  of  their  territory  for  the  joint  maintenance  of 
schools.  We  have  not  yet  brought  the  power  of  united 
action  to  bear  with  half  its  force  upon  the  end  or  the 
means  of  education.  I  think  it  will  yet  be  found  more  em- 
phatically true  in  this  department  of  human  action,  than 
in  any  other,  that  adding  individual  means  muliplies  social 
power.  If  four  districts  cannot  be  united,  three  may.  If 
the  central  point  of  the  territory  happen  to  be  populous, 
a  schoolhouse  may  be  built,  consisting  of  two  rooms  ;  one 
for  the  large,  the  other  for  the  small  scholars  ;  both  upon 
the  same  floor,  or  one  above  the  other.  It  ought  to  be 
remarked,  that  where  there  are  two  schoolrooms  under 
the  same  roof,  care  should  be  taken  to  have  the  walls 
well  deafened,  so  that  neither  should  ever  be  incommoded 
by  any  noises  in  the  other. 

The  above  enumeration  of  requisites  in  a  schoolhouse 
is  considered  absolutely  essential  and  indispensable.  Just 
so  far  as  they  are  disregarded,  that  nursery  for  the  rear- 


470  REPORT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

ing  of  vigorous,  intelligent,  and  upright  men,  must  fail 
of  its  object.  If  the  children's  lungs  are  fed  only  with 
noxious  and  corrupted  air,  which  has  once  performed  its 
office,  and  is,  therefore,  incapable  of  performing  it  again, 
without  renovation,  it  may  generate  positive  and  incura- 
ble disease,  and  impair  the  energies  both  of  body  and  mind 
for  the  residue  of  life.  "  In  looking  back  upon  the  lan- 
guor of  fifty  years  of  labor  as  a  teacher,"  said  the  vener- 
able Mr.  Woodbridge,  "  reiterated  with  many  a  weary  day, 
I  attribute  a  great  proportion  of  it  to  mephitic  air ;  nor 
can  I  doubt  that  it  has  compelled  many  worthy  and  prom- 
ising' teachers  to  quit  the  employment.  Neither  can  I 
doubt  that  it  has  been  the  great  cause  of  their  subsequent 
sickly  habits  and  untimely  decease."  People,  who  shud- 
der at  a  flesh-wound  and  a  trickle  of  blood,  will  confine 
their  children  like  convicts,  and  compel  them,  month  after 
month,  to  breathe  quantities  of  poison.  It  would  less 
impair  the  mental  and  physical  constitutions  of  our  chil- 
dren, gradually  to  draw  an  ounce  of  blood  from  their 
veins,  during  the  same  length  of  time,  than  to  send  them 
to  breathe,  for  six  hours  in  a  day,  the  lifeless  and  poisoned 
air  of  some  of  our  schoolrooms.  Let  any  man,  who  votes 
for  confining  children  in  small  rooms  and  keeping  them 
on  stagnant  air,  try  the  experiment  of  breathing  his  own 
breath  only  four  times  over  ;  and,  if  medical  aid  be  not 
at  hand,  the  children  will  never  be  endangered  by  his 
vote  afterwards.  Such  darkening  and  benumbing  of  the 
mind  accustoms  it,  in  its  first  beginnings,  to  look  at 
objects,  as  it  were,  through  a  haze,  and  to  seize  them  with 
a  feeble  grasp,  and  robs  it  of  the  pleasure  of  seeing  things 
in  a  bright  light.  Children  always  feel  a  keen  delight  in 
the  consciousness  of  overcoming  difficulties,  and  of  fully 
comprehending  any  subject.  This  pleasure  is  the  most 
legitimate  of  all  rewards,  and  one  which  Nature  always 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  471 

pays  down  on  the  spot.  But,  instead  of  this,  after  filling 
their  brains  with  bird-lime,  we  taunt  or  chastise  them  if 
they  stick  or  get  posed.  If  a  child  suffer  from  heat  or 
cold,  from  a  constrained  or  unnatural  position  ;  if  his 
attention  be  perpetually  broken  off  by  causes  beyond  his 
control ;  it  tends  to  make  his  temper  fretful  and  irritable, 
and  compels  him  to  go  back,  again  and  again,  to  the  begin- 
ning of  his  problem  or  exercise,  like  a  traveller  obliged 
to  return  home  and  commence  his  journey  anew  after 
having  completed  half  its  distance. 

LIGHT.  —  WINDOWS. 

The  manner  in  which  a  schoolhouse  is  lighted  is  of  no 
inconsiderable  consequence.  The  additional  cost  of  obey- 
ing philosophical  principles  is,  at  most,  trivial.  We  ought 
also  to  remember,  that  the  laws  of  Nature  are  never  vio- 
lated with  impunity.  In  modern  times  the  eye  is  much 
more  used  than  it  formerly  was.  Civilization  has  imposed 
multiplied  and  difficult  labors  upon  that  organ.  Perhaps 
the  eye  gives  fewer  monitions  of  being  overworked,  than 
any  other  bodily  power.  It  seems  more  to  exhaust  its 
strength,  and  then  fail  irrecoverably.  If  so,  it  should  be 
protected  by  the  foresight  of  reason.  When  provision  is 
not  made  for  admitting  into  a  schoolroom  a  good  deal  more 
light  than  is  ordinarily  wanted,  there  will  frequently  be  too 
little,  and  no  remedy.  Hence  the  windows  should  be 
such,  as  to  furnish  sufficient  light  at  all  times,  and  means 
should  be  provided  for  excluding  any  excess.  Window- 
blinds  and  curtains,  therefore,  are  essential.  The  transi- 
tions of  light  in  the  open  air  are  very  great ;  but  it  is  to 
be  observed,  that  there  is  no  out-of-door  occupation  which 
severely  tasks  the  eye.  But  in  a  schoolroom,  without 
blinds  or  curtains,  when  the  sun  is  allowed  to  shine 
directly  upon  a  child's  head,  book,  or  desk,  the  transition 


472  REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY 

is  greater  and  more  sudden  than  in  the  open  air  ;  while, 
at  the  same  time,  the  eye,  being  intensely  engaged  in  look- 
ing at  minute  objects,  has  its  pupil  widely  distended,  so  that 
the  greatest  quantity  of  light  falls  upon  the  optic  nerve. 

The  following  is  extracted  from  a  lecture,  delivered  by 
Dr.  Edward  Reynolds,  of  Boston,  before  the  American 
Institute  of  Instruction,  in  1833.  "  How  much  talent 
lies  dormant  by  the  morbidly  sensitive  eyesight,  occasioned 
by  inordinate  and  untimely  use  of  the  eyes  !  This  last- 
mentioned  evil  is  increasing  to  a  fearful  amount  among 
the  young.  Accurate  inquiries  have  convinced  me,  that 
a  large  number  of  these  individuals  must  go  back  to  the 
schoolroom  to  find  the  source  of  their  infirmities." 

No  persons,  going  with  their  eyes  unprotected,  ever 
cross  the  Andes,  without  losing  their  sight.  The  glare 
of  light  from  the  snow  destroys  it.  Such  facts  admonish 
us  to  beware  of  exposing  the  eyes  of  the  young,  either  to 
very  intense  light,  or  to  great  transitions,  while  engaged 
in  looking  at  small  letters,  or  in  making  fine  marks  on 
white  paper.  To  say  that  the  loss  or  impairing  of  sight 
is  an  evil  too  contingent  and  uncertain  to  demand  precau- 
tion, is  neither  philosophical  nor  humane.  Admit,  that  it 
is  a  contingent  and  uncertain  evil,  in  regard  to  any  par- 
ticular individual  so  exposed  ;  as  it  is  uncertain,  which 
of  the  children,  in  Egypt,  shall  be  blind  men  ;  yet  that 
some  one  out  of  a  given  number,  subjected  to  the  danger, 
shall  be  blind,  is  as  certain  as  any  law  of  Nature.  Laws 
applicable  to  classes  of  men  are  just  as  infallible  in  their 
operation  as  those  applicable  to  individuals,  though  we 
cannot  foresee  upon  which  of  the  individuals  in  the  class 
the  law  is  to  be  verified.  In  a  multitude  of  cases,  each 
tendency,  however  slight,  will  have  its  quota  of  the 
results.  Hence  the  necessity  of  meeting  tendencies  with 

prevention.* 

*  See  Appendix  D. 


ON   SCHOOLHOUSES.  473 

In  order  that  passing,  out-door  objects  and  events  may 
not  draw  off  the  attention  of  the  scholars,  it  is  usually 
recommended  to  insert  the  windows  so  high,  that  such 
objects  and  events  will  be  invisible  in  the  schoolroom.  It 
cannot,  however,  be  denied,  that  this  gives  to  the  room  a 
prison  or  cellar-like  appearance.  May  not  such  interrup- 
tions be  better  avoided  by  selecting  a  retired  situation, 
and  by  arranging  the  seats,  so  that  the  scholars  shall  sit 
facing  from  the  road  ?  Nor  can  there  be  any  necessity 
for  having  the  windows  very  high  for  this  purpose.  As 
scholars  sit  in  their  seats,  the  eyes  of  but  few  will  be  more 
than  three  feet  and  a  half  from  the  floor.  This  would 
allow  of  windows  six  feet  deep  in  a  room  ten  feet  high. 
So,  too,  it  would  be  a  perfect  security  against  the  evil,  if 
the  lower  sash,  or  the  lowest  part  of  it,  were  glazed  with 
ground  glass.  The  windows  should  be  made  so  that  the 
upper  sash  can  be  lowered.  This  may  be  very  desirable 
in  summer,  independently  of  the  considerations,  above 
urged,  in  regard  to  ventilation. 

YAEDS   OR   PLAY-GROUNDS. 

On  this  subject,  I  have  never  seen,  nor  am  I  able  to 
prepare,  any  thing  so  judicious,  and  apposite  to  the  con- 
dition of  the  districts  in  Massachusetts,  as  the  following 
paragraphs,  taken  from  a  Report,  published  in  1833,  "  by 
order  of  the  Directors  of  the  Essex-County  Teachers' 
Association." 

"  As  the  situation  should  be  pleasant  and  healthful,  so 
there  should  be  sufficient  space  around  the  building.  With 
the  number  who  ordinarily  attend  these  institutions,  not 
less  than  a  quarter  of  an  acre  should  ever  be  thought  of 
as  a  space  for  their  accommodation  ;  and  this  should  be 
enclosed  from  the  public  highway,  so  as  to  secure  it  from 
cattle,  that  the  children  may  have  a  safe  and  clean  place 


474          REPORT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

for  exercise  at  recess  and  at  other  times.  We  believe  it 
no  uncommon  thing  for  a  district  to  meet  with  difficulty 
in  procuring  a  place  for  a  house  ;  for  while  most  wish  it 
to  be  near,  they  are  unwilling  to  have  it  stand  on  a  notch, 
taken  out  of  their  own  field.  This  reluctance  to  accom- 
modate the  district  may  have  been  carried  too  far  ;  the 
actual  may  be  less  than  the  imagined  evils.  Yet  it  is 
not  without  foundation ;  for  in  most  instances,  from 
the  scanty  and  niggardly  provision  made  by  the  district,  the 
man  knows  that  his  own  cultivated  fields  must  and  will 
be  made  the  place  of  the  scholars'  recreation.  We  do 
not  overstate,  when  we  say,  that  more  than  half  the 
inconveniences  which  persons  thus  experience  in  their 
property  from  the  contiguity  of  a  schoolhouse,  arises  from 
the  insufficient  provision  made  for  the  children  by  the 
district.  While  all  the  district  may  think  that  a  neigh- 
bor is  unaccommodating,  because  he  is  unwilling  to  let 
them  have  just  land  enough  to  set  their  house  upon,  the 
real  truth  is,  that  the  smallness  of  the  lot  is  the  very  thing 
which  justifies  his  reluctance  ;  for  whether  he  theorize  or 
not  on  the  subject,  he  well  understands  that  he  will  have 
to  afford  accommodations,  which  the  district  are  unwill- 
ing on  their  part  to  purchase.  Every  schoolhouse  lot 
should  be  large  enough  for  the  rational  exercise  which 
the  children  ought  to  have,  and  will  take.  It  would  be 
well  to  have  it  large  enough  to  contain  some  ornamental 
and  fruit  trees,  with  flower-borders,  which  we  know  chil- 
dren may  be  taught  to  cultivate  and  enjoy ;  and  by  an 
attention  to  which  their  ideas  of  property,  and  common 
rights,  and  obligations,  would  become  more  distinct.  By 
attention  to  what  belonged  to  themselves,  they  would  be 
kept  from  many  of  those  wanton  injuries  too  often  done 
to  the  possessions  of  those  near  them. 

"  In  regard  to  space,  no  one  can  be  ignorant  of  the  gen- 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  475 

eral  practice.  We  believe  it  would  be  difficult,  in  this 
county,  to  find  a  score  of  these  buildings,  where  the  lot 
is  as  large  as  the  most  inexperienced  on  the  subject 
would  judge  necessary. 

"  In  by  far  the  greater  number  of  instances,  there  is 
no  more  ground  than  that  which  is  occupied  by  the  build- 
ing ;  while  many  of  them  actually  stand  partly  or  wholly 
in  the  highway.  The  children,  therefore,  have  no  resort 
but  to  the  public  highway,  or  the  private  property  of  their 
neighbors,  for  amusement.  Healthful  and  vigorous  exer- 
cise is  restrained  ;  the  modesty  of  nature  is  often  out- 
raged ;  and,  not  unfrequently,  a  permanent  and  extensive 
injury  done  to  the  finer  and  better  feelings,  which  ought, 
at  that  age,  to  be  cultivated  and  confirmed  by  the  most 
careful  attention,  not  only  as  a  great  security  from  sin, 
but  as  a  most  lovely  ornament  through  life.  Besides  this, 
there  being  no  place  for  pleasant  exercise  for  the  boys 
out  of  doors,  the  schoolroom,  during  the  intermission  at, 
noon,  becomes  the  place  of  noise  and  tumult,  where,  not 
from  any  real  intention,  but  in  the  forgetfulness  of  gen- 
eral excitement,  gentlemanly  and  lady-like  feelings  are 
turned  into  ridicule,  and  an  attempt  to  behave  in  an 
orderly  and  becoming  manner  subjects  the  individual  to 
no  small  degree  of  persecution.  We  have  often  witnessed 
such  instances,  and  known  those  who  refused  to  engage 
in  these  rude  exercises  forced  out  of  the  room,  and  kept 
out  during  the  greater  part  of  an  intermission,  because 
their  example  cast  a  damp  upon  a  course  of  rude  and 
boisterous  conduct,  in  which  they  could  not  take  a  part. 
Whatever  others  may  think,  it  is  our  belief,  that  this 
noise  and  tumult  are,  in  a  great  measure,  the  natural 
overflowing  of  youthful  buoyancy,  which,  were  it  allowed 
to  spend  itself  in  out-door  amusements,  would  hardly 
ever  betray  itself  improperly  in  the  house." 


476  REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY 

There  is  another  topic  of  primary  importance,  the 
merits  of  which  are  so  well  developed  in  a  portion  of  the 
Report  above  referred  to,  that  I  shall  need  no  apology 
for  transferring  it  to  these  pages.  It  regards 

THE  DUTY  OF  INSTRUCTORS  IN  RELATION  TO 
SCHOOLHOUSES. 

"  Though  Instructors  may,  ordinarily,  have  no  direct 
agency  in  erecting  and  repairing  the  buildings  where  they 
are  employed  to  keep  school,  yet  by  a  little  carefulness, 
ingenuity,  and  enterprise,  they  can  do  much  to  avoid 
some  of  the  evils  connected  with  them.  When  about  to 
open  a  school,  they  can  look  at  the  house,  as  a  mechanic 
at  his  shop,  and  adapt  their  system  to  the  building,  and 
not  carry  into  a  house,  ill  adapted  to  its  development,  a 
system  of  operations,  however  speculatively  just  it  may 
appear  in  their  own  minds.  The  buildings  are  already 
constructed,  and  of  materials  not  over  plastic,  and  often 
as  incapable  of  accommodating  a  system  got  up  in  some 
other  place,  as  the  house  of  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield  was 
for  the  family  painting.  Instructors  should  make  the 
most  of  what  is  comfortable  and  convenient,  and  remedy, 
as  far  as  possible,  what  is  bad.  If  the  pupils  are  uncom- 
fortably seated,  they  can  allow  them  occasionally  to 
change  their  seats,  or  alter  their  position,  which,  though 
attended  with  some  inconvenience,  cannot  be  compared 
with  the  evils  growing  out  of  pain  and  restlessness,  and 
the  effects  which  are  likely  to  be  produced  upon  the 
health,  the  disposition,  morals,  and  progress  in  learning, 
from  a  long  confinement  in  an  uneasy  position.  Instruct- 
ors can  and  ought  to  use  their  influence  and  authority 
to  preserve  the  buildings  from  injuries,  such  as  cutting 
the  tables,  loosening  and  splitting  the  seats,  breaking  the 
doors  and  windows,  by  which  most  houses  of  this  class 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSE8.  477 

are  shamefully  mutilated,  and  their  inconveniences,  great 
enough  at  first,  are  increased.  The  extent  to  which 
injuries  of  this  kind  are  done,  and  the  inconveniences 
arising  from  them  in  respect  of  writing-books  and  clothes, 
are  great  beyond  what  is  ordinarily  thought ;  and,  as  it 
is  possible  in  a  considerable  degree  to  prevent  them,  they 
should  not  be  tolerated.  So  far  as  the  scholars  are 
concerned,  they  may  arise  from  a  mixture  of  causes ; 
thoughtlessness,  idleness,  a  restless  disposition,  or  real 
intent  to  do  injury.  But,  whatever  may  be  the  cause, 
it  argues  an  imperfection  in  the  moral  principle,  which, 
were  it  in  wholesome  exercise,  would  teach  them  that  it 
is  equally  iniquitous  to  damage  public  as  private  prop- 
erty. The  practice  we  refer  to  is  actual  injustice,  a  real 
trespass,  for  which,  in  almost  all  other  cases,  the  offender 
would  be  called  to  an  account.  And  we  must  confess 
that  it  is  matter  of  just  surprise,  that  more  efforts  have 
not  been  made  to  prevent  it.  A  high  responsibility  rel- 
ative to  this  concern  rests  on  the  instructors.  The  power 
of  preventing  this  lies  principally  with  them.  It  is 
obvious  then  to  remark,  if  they  have  much  reason  to  com- 
plain for  want  of  better  accommodations,  they  have  some 
reason  to  reform  ;  and  in  measuring  out  the  blame  which 
justly  rests  somewhere,  to  take  a  little  portion  to  them- 
selves. We  are  persuaded  that  schoolhouses  will  be  more 
readily  built  and  repaired,  when  instructors  shall  use 
more  exertions  to  save  them  from  the  folly  and  indiscre- 
tion of  children.  The  injuries  complained  of,  we  are 
persuaded,  if  not  wholly,  yet  to  a  great  extent,  can  be 
prevented ;  and  it  is  high  time  that  parents  and  teachers 
should  bring  together  their  fixed  and  operative  determi- 
nation, to  suffer  them  no  longer.  Separate  from  the 
inconveniences  which  scholars  themselves  experience  from 
them,  a  licentious  and  irresponsible  feeling,  in  regard  to 


478  REPORT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

public  property,  is  encouraged.  If  the  well-known  loose 
sense  of  obligation  in  respect  to  public  interests,  and  the 
wanton  injuries  which  are  so  frequently  done  to  institu- 
tions of  a  public  nature  of  every  description,  so  pre- 
eminently common  throughout  this  country,  do  not 
spring  up  in  the  habits  referred  to,  they  are  certainly 
most  powerfully  fostered  by  them;  and  there  is  great 
reason  to  apprehend,  that  a  principle  so  loose  in  respect 
to  public  property,  must  extend  itself  by  easy  transitions 
to  private.  In  every  view,  the  practice  is  wrong,  and  the 
effect  corrupting ;  and  it  is  high  time  that  the  attention 
of  the  community  was  directed  to  it,  the  obligations  of 
men  on  this  subject  more  fully  taught,  and,  when  neces- 
sary, enforced  in  all  our  institutions  of  learning,  from  the 
Infant  School  to  the  Professional  Hall,  not  excepting  our 
Theological  Seminaries,  where,  if  in  any  place,  we  should 
expect  regard  would  be  paid  to  public  rights,  and  the 
bestowments  of  private  munificence ;  and  we  could  wish 
the  evil  complained  of,  stopped  here ;  but  truth  con- 
strains us  to  say,  that  the  tables  and  seats  of  the  Bench 
and  Bar  in  our  court-houses,  the  pews,  and  even  the  pul- 
pits, in  our  places  of  religious  worship,  bear  evident 
marks,  that  neither  the  '  ermine  nor  the  lawn '  is  suffi- 
cient to  restrain  this  most  shameful,  deforming,  and 
mischievous  practice. 

"  Teachers  should  take  the  management  of  the  fire 
entirely  under  their  own  control ;  for  though  their  own 
feelings  may  not  be  the  thermometer  of  the  room,  yet, 
if  they  are  at  all  qualified  to  teach,  they  must  possess 
more  discretion  on  the  subject  than  those  under  them. 
They  should  see  that  the  room  is  in  a  comfortable  con- 
dition by  the  time  the  exercises  commence.  Many  a  half- 
day  is  nearly  wasted,  and  sometimes,  from  the  disorder 
consequent  upon  the  state  of  things,  worse  than  lost, 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  479 

because,  when  the  children  collect,  the  room  is  so  cold, 
that  they  cannot  study,  nor  can  they  be  still.  Nothing 
short  of  the  master's  being  in  the  house  a  half-hour 
before  the  school  commences,  can,  ordinarily,  secure  the 
object  referred  to.  It  may  be  objected,  that  instructors 
are  not  employed  to  build  fires.  We  do  not  ask  them  to 
do  it ;  but  we  ask  them  to  see  that  fires  are  seasonably 
built.  And  we  must  think  those  who  can  define  so 
nicely  the  limits  of  their  obligations,  as  to  excuse  them- 
selves from  this  care,  have  not  the  spirit  of  high-minded 
and  enterprising  teachers,  and  that,  however  worthy  they 
may  be,  and  however  well  qualified  for  other  employ- 
ments, they  should  never  offer  themselves  for  that  of 
school-keeping. 

"  Instructors  should  see,  also,  that  the  schoolroom  be, 
in  all  its  parts,  kept  in  a  clean  and  comfortable  condition. 
Cleanliness  is  not  ordinarily  ranked  so  high,  nor  is  the 
contrary  habit  ranked  so  low,  in  the  scale  of  moral  worth 
and  sinful  defilement,  as  they  should  be,  nor  do  they,  as 
we  fear,  enter  so  fully  into  the  account  when  men  are 
estimating  their  own  moral  state,  or  when  others  are 
estimating  it  for  them,  as  they  ought.  We  will  not  say, 
as  a  very  able  and  careful  observer  of  men  once  said,  that 
he  did  not  believe  any  person  could  be  a  true  Christian, 
who  was  not  becomingly  neat  in  his  person  and  in  his 
business ;  yet  we  are  free  to  say,  that  every  additional 
year's  intercourse  with  the  world  in  moral  and  religious 
concerns,  deepens  the  conviction,  that  cleanliness  is  in- 
separable from  any  considerable  advancement  in  a  reli- 
gious life,  and  that  where  its  requirements  are  disregarded, 
there  is  much  reason  to  apprehend  that  other  and  impor- 
tant defects  of  a  moral  nature  do,  most  probably,  exist. 
Cleanliness  in  one's  person,  and  the  various  occupations, 
is  intimately  connected  with  manly  and  upright  conduct, 


480          REPORT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

chaste  and  pure  thoughts,  and  sensible  comfort  in  any 
situation  ;  and,  as  a  service  exacted,  or  a  habit  estab- 
lished, would  go  far  to  secure  good  order  and  agreeable 
conduct  in  any  school.  We  are  persuaded  that  one  of 
the  most  powerful  helps  towards  good  government,  and 
consequent  orderly  conduct  among  the  pupils,  is  over- 
looked, through  inattention  or  ignorance,  where  this  prin- 
ciple is  not  called  in  ;  and  where  an  exertion  to  establish 
a  principle  and  habit  of  neatness  has  not  been  put  forth, 
one  of  the  strong  bonds  to  a  future  worthy  moral  conduct 
is  lost,  and  a  most  important  and  legitimate  object  of 
instruction  and  education  neglected.  Great  exertions 
should  be  used  to  cultivate  among  the  pupils  a  taste  for 
cleanliness,  decency,  and  elegance  in  all  things,  and  their 
particular  responsibility  in  respect  to  the  proper  state  of 
the  house,  and  all  its  outward  connections.  This  is  their 
home,  for  the  good  and  decent  state  of  which,  their  char- 
acter is  at  stake,  and  their  comfort  involved.  They 
should  firmly  and  perseveringly  resolve,  that  the  school- 
room should  be  kept  clean  ;  not  simply  swept,  but  often 
washed,  and  every  day  dusted.  Without  this  attention, 
it  is  impossible  their  own  persons,  their  clothes,  or  books, 
can  be  preserved  in  a  decent  and  comfortable  state.  The 
room  they  should  consider  as  their  parlor,  and  those  that 
occupy  it,  company  to  one  another.  The  room  must, 
therefore,  always  be  in  a  visiting  condition.  And  what 
should  prevent  this  ?  Cannot  a  number  of  young  people, 
all  of  whom,  it  must  be  presumed,  are  trained  to  order 
and  neatness  at  home,  bring  the  principles  of  order  and 
neatness  into  an  apartment,  where  they  are  to  spend  so 
much  time  together,  and  where  any  one,  who  knows  much 
of  the  business  of  common  families,  must  know  there  is 
less  excuse  for  any  disorder  or  dirt,  than  there  is  in  most 
of  our  houses  ?  We  know  it  is  practicable  to  have  a 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  481 

schoolroom  kept  in  a  comfortable  condition,  and  that 
youth  instructed  and  encouraged  to  do  this,  and  having 
their  attention  sufficiently  directed  to  it,  will  soon  become 
interested  in  the  subject,  and  manifest  a  commendable 
disposition  to  have  things  as  they  ought  to  be,  and  a  will- 
ingness to  make  all  the  personal  efforts  which  are 
required  to  accomplish  it.  And  we  are  persuaded,  that, 
when  this  is  attempted,  it  will  be  found,  perhaps,  to 
the  surprise  of  many,  that  from  the  less  injury  done 
to  the  clothes  of  scholars  and  to  the  books,  as  well  as  from 
the  better  conduct  which  will  invariably  ensue,  many  of 
the  evils,  connected  with  our  Common  Schools,  would 
be  removed. 

"  It  is  a  fact,  susceptible  of  as  perfect  demonstration 
as  any  moral  proposition,  that  filth  and  dirt,  if  they  be  in 
part  the  effect,  are,  at  the  same  time,  among  the  most 
efficient  causes  of  corrupt  morals  and  debased  conduct. 
Gisborne,  in  one  of  his  works,  has  a  remark  of  this  kind, 
(we  do  not  pretend  to  quote  his  words,)  that  in  a  part 
of  London,  more  young  families,  who,  at  setting  out  in 
life,  promise  well,  are  made  corrupt,  and  led  into  wretched 
and  destructive  habits,  from  the  unhappy  location  of 
houses,  which  renders  all  attempts  to  keep  them  in  a 
pure  and  comfortable  condition  ineffectual,  than  from  any 
other  single  cause.  Ineffectual  efforts  to  keep  things 
neat  lead  to  neglect,  neglect  to  filthy  habits,  and  filthy 
habits  to  low  and  degraded  vice.  If  such  be  the  opera- 
tion of  a  want  of  neatness  in  families,  and  we  apprehend 
the  justness  of  the  remark  will  find  support  in  instances 
which  must  have  fallen  within  the  knowledge  of  every 
attentive  observer,  are  there  not  reasons  to  fear,  that  the 
same  effects  will  follow  the  same  course  in  school  ?  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that,  in  many  instances,  a  sense  of  pro- 
priety is  destroyed,  in  more,  greatly  weakened,  by  the 

VOL.  I.  31 


482  EEPORT  OP  THE  SECRETARY 

state  of  things  in  and  about  the  houses  of  education.  A 
disregard  to  this  subject,  too  common  among  scholars, 
often  settles  down  into  a  confirmed  habit,  and  gradually 
spreads  itself  over  the  whole  surface  of  action,  and 
through  life  ;  the  individual  becomes  less  interesting  in 
his  appearance,  less  agreeable  in  his  manners,  less  honor- 
able in  his  conduct,  and  less  moral  and  upright  in  his 
principles. 

"  Instructors  should  also  guard  against  the  bad  influ- 
ence upon  the  dispositions  and  manners  of  scholars, 
which  the  inconveniences  they  experience  are  apt  to  pro- 
duce. The  pain  and  uneasiness  which  a  child  experi- 
ences from  an  uncomfortable  situation  in  school,  he  will 
very  likely  associate  with  his  books  and  studies,  or  with 
the  instructor  and  regulations  of  school ;  he  may  connect 
them  with  those  who  sit  near  him,  and  who  may  be  just 
as  uneasy  as  himself,  and  be  ready  to  hate  the  whole  and 
quarrel  with  all,  because  he  feels  pain,  and  cannot,  or 
does  not,  rightly  understand  the  occasion  of  it.  The  local 
situation  of  children  in  school  has  a  most  obvious  bearing 
upon  the  conduct  and  temper.  Place  them  a  little  out 
of  the  observation  of  the  instructor,  and  they  will  play  ; 
put  them  where  they  are  crowded,  or  sit  with  inconve- 
nience, and  they  will  quarrel.  '  It  has  often  been  a  subject 
of  interest  to  me,'  says  one  of  the  committee,  '  when 
visiting  schools,  to  observe  the  operations  of  local  circum- 
stances upon  the  mind  and  conduct  of  children  ;  and  the 
more  I  have  observed,  the  more  importance  am  I  con- 
strained to  attach  to  these  things.  In  one  house  where  I 
have  many  times  called,  I  do  not  recollect  ever  passing 
a  half -hour,  without  seeing  contention  among  those 
placed  in  a  particular  part  of  the  room,  and  play  in 
another.  I  distinctly  recollect  the  same  thing  in  the  sem- 
inary where  I  pursued  my  preparatory  studies.  It  was 


ON  SCHOOLHOUSES.  483 

as  obvious  in  the  lecture-room  in  college.  In  the  semi- 
nary which  I  had  the  care  of  for  some  years,  it  was  so 
apparent  that  I  often  changed  the  situation  of  those  who 
were  unfavorably  placed,  to  prevent  the  feelings  and 
conduct  likely  to  be  produced  from  settling  down  into  con- 
firmed habits.  For  permanent  bad  effects  may  and  have, 
in  fact,  grown  out  of  these  circumstances.  Quarrels,  also, 
which  have  sprung  up  between  children,  and  which  had 
no  other  legitimate  cause  than  their  being  placed  to- 
gether in  school,  on  uncomfortable  seats,  have  led  to  a 
state  of  unkind  feelings,  and  unfriendly  conduct  through 
life.  The  influence  has  sometimes  extended  beyond  the 
individuals  ;  families  and  neighborhoods  have  been  drawn 
into  the  contention  ;  and  in  not  a  few  instances  whole 
districts  thrown  into  disorder,  only  because  at  first  some 
little  twig  of  humanity  had  become  restless  and  quarrel- 
some, in  consequence  of  his  uneasy  position  in  school.' 

"But  if  the  effect  be  confined  to  the  individual,  yet  it 
may  be  sufficiently  unhappy.  Suppose,  from  one  of  the 
causes  above  named,  the  child  acquire  a  habit  of  loose 
and  foolish  playfulness,  or  of  restless  discontent — sup- 
pose he  acquire  a  disrelish  for  schools,  his  books,  or  un- 
kind feelings  towards  his  instructor,  or  his  fellows  —  will 
there  not  be  much  personal  loss,  and  is  there  no  danger 
of  future  consequences  —  is  there  no  danger  that  these 
feelings  will  go  into  future  life,  and  the  individual  prove 
less  comfortable  to  himself,  and  less  comfortable  to  others  ? 
Youth  is  the  season  when  the  character  is  formed,  and 
direction  given  to  the  feelings  and  the  conduct.  It  is  a 
matter  of  no  small  interest  to  the  man  himself,  or  those 
with  whom  he  is  to  act  in  future  life,  that  these  be  of  a 
gentle  and  accommodating  character. 

"  Since,  therefore,  from  the  construction  of  many  of 
our  schoolhouses,  it  is  not  possible  for  the  scholars  to  bo 


484  REPOET  OF  THE  SECRETARY 

altogether  free  from  suffering,  it  is  a  subject  well  worthy 
the  special  attention  of  instructors,  carefully  to  guard 
against  the  consequences  which  it  is  like  to  produce  upon 
their  temper  and  conduct.  This  may  be  done,  in  some 
degree,  by  allowing  the  children  occasionally  to  change 
their  situation,  to  rise  and  stand  up  a  few  minutes ;  or, 
at  convenient  seasons,  giving  them  a  short  additional  re- 
eess.  To  remove,  in  some  degree,  the  gloom  and  deform- 
ities of  the  house,  and  at  the  same  time  to  draw  off  the 
attention  from  their  bodily  pains,  scholars  should  be  al- 
lowed to  ornament  it  with  greens  and  flowers,  and  other 
things  of  an  innocent  nature,  attracting  to  the  minds  of 
youth.  Agreeable  objects  originate  agreeable  feelings. 
and  pleasant  feelings  lead  to  good  conduct.  We  would 
also  recommend  to  instructors  to  encourage  the  children, 
in  places  where  there  is  the  least  prospect  of  security,  to 
cultivate  flower-borders  upon  the  schoolhouse-grounds, 
and  certainly  in  boxes  set  in  the  house.  Should  it  be 
objected,  that  their  attention  would  in  this  way  be  with- 
drawn from  their  books,  we  must  reply,  that  we  doubt 
the  fact,  and  would  in  turn  ask  whether  the  feelings,  the 
taste,  and  the  understanding  would  not  be  most  essen- 
tially improved  by  attention  to  the  works  of  Nature,  and 
efforts  to  bring  to  the  highest  perfection  those  things 
which  a  wise  Providence,  who  knows  by  what  means  the 
character  of  man  is  to  be  formed,  has  made  beautiful  to 
the  eye.  Our  own  feelings  have  often  been  hurt,  and  our 
views  of  expediency  entirely  crossed,  when  we  have  seen, 
as  we  have  on  many  occasions,  a  handsome  branch,  or 
beautiful  flower,  or  well-arranged  nosegay,  torn  in  a  cen- 
sorious and  ruthless  manner  from  the  hand  of  a  child,  or 
the  place  where  his  love  for  ornament  and  beauty  had 
placed  it.  We  would  encourage  the  children  to  make 
the  room  of  confinement  as  pleasant  to  them  as  they  can, 


ON   SCHOOLHOUSES.  485 

consistently  with  other  duties ;  and  if  at  any  time  it  be 
observed,  that  these  things  are  gaining  an  undue  influ- 
ence over  them,  to  check  it,  as  any  other  practice  not 
evil  in  itself,  but  only  in  excess,  should  be  corrected.  It 
should  be  done  in  such  a  manner,  that  the  child  should 
be  left  free  to  enjoy,  as  far  as  it  is  safe  to  enjoy,  and  feel, 
too,  that  he  does  it  with  the  full  approbation  and  good- 
will of  his  instructor. 

"  There  is  one  subject  more  to  which  we  must  be  per- 
mitted to  refer ;  one  with  which  the  morals  of  the  young 
are  intimately  connected,  one  in  which  parents,  instruct- 
ors, and  scholars  should  unite  their  efforts  to  produce  a 
reform.  There  should  be  nothing  in  or  about  the  school- 
houses  calculated  to  defile  the  mind,  corrupt  the  heart, 
or  excite  unholy  and  forbidden  appetites  ;  yet,  considering 
the  various  character  of  those  brought  together  in  our 
public  schools,  and  considering  also  how  inventive  are 
corrupt  minds,  in  exhibiting  openly  the  defilement  which 
reigns  within,  we  do  not  know  but  we  must  expect  that 
schoolhouses,  as  well  as  other  public  buildings,  and  even 
fences,  will  continue  to  bear  occasional  marks  both  of 
lust  and  profaneness.  But  we  must  confess,  that  the 
general  apathy  which  apparently  exists  on  this  subject 
does  appear  strange  to  us.  It  is  an  humbling  fact,  that 
in  many  of  these  houses,  there  are  highly  indecent,  pro- 
fane, and  libidinous  marks,  images,  and  expressions,  some 
of  which  are  spread  out  in  broad  characters  on  the  walls, 
where  they  unavoidably  meet  the  eyes  of  all  who  come 
into  the  house,  or,  being  on  the  outside,  salute  the  trav- 
eller as  he  passes  by,  wounding  the  delicate  and  annoying 
the  moral  sensibilities  of  the  heart ;  while  there  is  still  a 
much  greater  number,  in  smaller  character,  upon  the  ta- 
bles and  seats  of  the  students,  and  even,  in  some  instances, 
of  the  instructors,  constantly  before  the  eyes  of  those 


486  REPOKT  OF  THE  SECRETARY 

who  happen  to  occupy  them.  How  contaminating  these 
must  be,  no  one  can  be  entirely  insensible.  And  yet  how 
unalarmed,  or,  if  not  entirely  unalarmed,  how  little  is 
the  mind  of  the  community  directed  to  the  subject,  and 
how  little  effort  put  forth  to  stay  this  fountain  of  corrup- 
tion !  Such  things  ought  not  to  be ;  they  can,  to  a  con- 
siderable extent,  be  prevented.  The  community  are  not, 
therefore,  altogether  clear  in  this  matter. 

"  When  we  regard  the  deleterious  effect  which  the  want 
of  accommodation  and  other  imperfections,  in  and  about 
these  buildings,  must  have  upon  the  growth,  health,  and 
perfectness  of  the  bodily  system,  upon  the  mental  and 
moral  powers,  upon  the  tender  and  delicate  feelings  of 
the  heart,  we  must  suppose  there  is  as  pressing  a  call  for 
the  direct  interference  of  the  wise  and  benevolent,  to 
produce  an  improvement,  as  there  is  for  the  efforts  of  the 
Prison  Discipline  Society,  or  for  many  of  the  benevolent 
exertions  of  the  day.  And  we  do  most  solemnly  and 
affectionately  call  upon  all,  according  to  their  situation  in 
life,  to  direct  their  attention  to  the  subject;  for  the 
bodies,  the  minds,  the  hearts  of  the  young  and  rising 
generation  require  this.  It  is  a  service  due  to  the  pres- 
ent and  future  generation,  —  a  service  due  to  their  bodies 
and  souls." 

I  will  now  bring  this  long  statement  to  a  close  by  the 
enumeration  of  a  few  further  particulars,  which  could  not 
well  be  arranged  under  any  of  the  preceding  heads  ;  and 
shall  omit  such  things  only  as  no  CIVILIZED  people  can  ever 
forget. 

Where  the  expense  can  be  afforded,  every  schoolhouse 
should  be  provided  with  a  bell.  If  not  the  only  mode,  it 
is  probably  the  best  one  for  insuring  punctuality ;  and 
the  importance  of  punctuality  can  hardly  be  overstated, 


ON   SCHOOLHOUSES.  487 

either  as  it  regards  the  progress  of  the  school  collectively, 
or  the  habits  of  the  individual  pupils.  If  morals  were  to 
be  divided  into  the  greater  and  the  less,  the  virtue  of 
punctuality  should  be  set  down  in  the  first  class.  Prob- 
ably there  are  few  districts,  which  would  not  obtain  a  full 
equivalent,  every  year,  for  the  price  of  a  bell,  in  the  im- 
proved habits  and  increased  progress  of  the  children. 

It  is  also  very  desirable  to  have  a  time-piece  placed  in 
some  part  of  the  schoolroom,  where  it  can  be  seen  by  all 
the  scholars.  It  is  both  encouragement  and  relief  to 
them.  It  has  an  effect  upon  pupils,  just  like  that  of  mile- 
stones upon  travellers.  Men  and  children  have  a  wonder- 
ful power  of  adapting  themselves  to  circumstances ;  but, 
with  all  their  flexibility,  neither  child  nor  man  can  ever 
adapt  himself  to  a  state  of  suspense  or  uncertainty.  All 
the  large  schools  in  the  city  of  Lowell  are  provided  with 
a  clock,  which  strikes  after  stated  intervals.  This  is  a 
signal  for  classes  to  take  their  places  for  recitation,  and 
for  reciting-classes  to  return  to  their  seats. 

Many  schoolhouses  in  the  country  are  situated  a  hun- 
dred rods  or  more  from  any  dwelling-house.  In  all  cases 
it  is  desirable,  but  in  such  cases  it  seems  almost  indispen- 
sable, to  have  a  pump  or  well,  where  water  for  drink  and 
so  forth  can  be  obtained.  In  the  summer,  children 
usually  require  drink  once  in  half  a  day.  A  hundred 
rods  is  too  far  for  them  to  run  in  a  brief  intermission,  or 
for  water  conveniently  to  be  carried ;  —  to  say  nothing  of 
the  inconvenience  to  a  neighbor  of  having  his  premises 
invaded  year  after  year,  and,  perhaps,  his  gardens  and 
fruit-trees  thereby  subjected  to  petty  depredations. 

No  children  or  teacher  ought  ever  to  be  blamed  for 
having  a  mud-plastered  floor,  if  mats  and  scrapers  are  not 
placed  at  the  doors  of  the  house. 

If  there  be  not  a  cellar  for  wood  when   that  species 


488  REPORT  OF  THE  SECRETARY 

of  fuel  is  used,  a  shed  in  which  to  house  it  is  indispen- 
sable. 

In  the  year  1831,  the  censors  of  the  American  Institute 
of  Instruction  submitted  to  that  body  a  "  Plan  of  a  Vil- 
lage Schoolhouse."  As  the  object  of  this  Report  is,  not 
so  much  to  present  a  model  for  universal  adoption,  as 
to  explain  the  great  principles  which  should  be  observed, 
whatever  model  may  be  selected,  I  have  thought  it  might 
be  acceptable  to  accompany  this  Report  with  the  "  Plan  " 
which  was  submitted  by  the  censors  as  above  stated, 
together  with  all  the  material  parts  of  their  explanation 
of  it.  They  are  therefore  appended.  [See  the  2d  vol- 
ume of  the  Lectures  of  the  American  Institute  of  Instruc- 
tion, p.  285,  et  seq.] 

It  will  be  perceived,  that  the  "  Plan  "  of  the  censors 
exhibits  a  Doric  portico  in  front  of  the  house.  Such  an 
ornament  would  be  highly  creditable  to  the  district  which 
should  supply  it.  It  would  be  a  visible  and  enduring 
manifestation  of  the  interest  they  felt  in  the  education  of 
their  children.  And  what  citizen  of  Massachusetts  would 
not  feel  an  ingenuous  and  honorable  pride,  if,  in  whatever 
direction  he  should  have  occasion  to  travel  through  the 
State,  he  could  go  upon  no  highway,  nor  towards  any 
point  of  the  compass,  without  seeing,  after  every  interval 
of  three  or  four  miles,  a  beautiful  temple,  planned  accord- 
ing to  some  tasteful  model  in  architecture,  dedicated  to 
the  noble  purpose  of  improving  the  rising  generation,  and 
bearing  evidence,  in  all  its  outward  aspects  and  circum- 
stances, of  fulfilling  the  sacred  object  of  its  erection  ? 
What  external  appearance  could  impress  strangers  from 
other  States  or  Countries,  as  they  passed  through  our 
borders,  with  such  high  and  demonstrative  proofs,  that 
they  were  in  the  midst  of  a  people,  who,  by  forecasting 
the  truest  welfare  of  their  children,  meant  nobly  to  seek 


ON   SCHOOLHOUSES.  489 

for  honor  in  the  character  of  their  posterity,  rather  than 
meanly  to  be  satisfied  with  that  of  their  ancestors  ?  And 
how  different  would  be  the  feelings  of  all  the  children 
towards  the  schools,  and  through  the  schools  towards  all 
other  means  of  elevation  and  improvement,  if,  from  their 
earliest  days  of  observation,  they  were  accustomed  always 
to  look  at  the  schoolhouse,  and  to  hear  it  spoken  of,  as 
among  the  most  attractive  objects  in  the  neighborhood  ! 

In  the  preceding  remarks,  I  have  suggested  defects  in 
the  construction  of  our  schoolhouses  only  for  the  purpose 
of  more  specifically  pointing  out  improvements.  I  would 
not  be  understood  as  detracting  from,  but  as  attesting 
to,  their  usefulness,  as  they  are.  Although  often  injudi- 
ciously located,  unsightly  without,  and  uncomfortable 
within,  yet,  more  than  any  thing  else,  they  tend  to  convert 
the  hope  of  the  philanthropist  into  faith,  and  they  fill  him 
with  a  gratification  a  thousand  times  nobler  and  more 
rational  than  the  sight  of  all  the  palaces  in  the  Old 
World. 

HORACE    MANN, 
Secretary  of  the  Board  of  Education. 
Boston,  March  27,  1838. 


SECOND  ANNUAL  REPOET  OP  THE  SECRETARY 


BOARD    OF   EDUCATION. 


DECEMBER,    1838. 


SECOND    ANNUAL    REPORT 


SECRETARY  OF  THE  BOARD  OF  EDUCATION. 


To  THE  BOARD  OF  EDUCATION. 

GENTLEMEN  :  —  I  hereby  respectfully  submit  some  ac- 
count of  my  proceedings  during  the  last  year,  in  dis- 
charging the  duties  of  the  office  you  have  confided  to  me. 
I  should  deem  it  an  encroachment  upon  the  province  of 
the  Board  to  advert  to  such  topics  in  the  administration 
of  the  school  law,  as  are  equally  as  well  known  to  the 
Board  as  to  myself;  —  such,  for  instance,  as  the  measures 
they  have  taken  for  establishing  Normal  Schools,  for  caus- 
ing school  libraries  to  be  prepared,  and  the  designation  of 
the  form  and  time  for  making  the  School  Returns.  I 
shall,  therefore,  confine  myself  to  such  facts  as  have  come 
more  immediately  within  my  own  knowledge,  and  to  the 
considerations  suggested  by  them. 

During  the  past  season,  after  having  given  seasonable 
notice  by  sending  circulars  to  the  school  committee  of 
each  town  in  the  Commonwealth,  I  visited  the  fourteen 
counties  in  the  State,  and,  at  convenient  and  central 
places,  have  met  such  of  the  friends  of  Education  as 
chose  to  attend.  At  a  majority  of  these  meetings  I  have 
been  aided  by  the  presence  and  co-operation  of  one  or 
more  of  the  members  of  the  Board.  Other  distinguished 
citizens,  who,  for  many  years,  have  received  the  fullest 

493 


494  THE  SECRETARY'S 

testimonials  of  the  people's  confidence,  have  been  present, 
and  have  taken  an  active  and  most  useful  part  in  the 
proceedings.  Except  in  the  three  counties  of  Hampden, 
Berkshire,  and  Essex,  the  conventions  have  been  well 
attended  by  school  committees,  teachers,  and  other  friends 
of  Education.  The  time  of  the  meetings  has  been  occu- 
pied by  statements,  respecting  the  condition  of  the  public 
schools,  by  discussions  in  regard  to  the  processes  of 
teaching,  and  by  the  delivery  of  one  or  more  addresses. 

It  appeared  from  facts  ascertained  during  the  last  part 
of  the  year  1837,  and  communicated  by  me  to  the  Board 
iu  the  report  of  Jan.  1,  1838,  that  the  Common-school 
system  of  Massachusetts  had  fallen  into  a  state  of  general 
unsoundness  and  debility  ;  that  a  great  majority  of  the 
schoolhouses  were  not  only  ill  adapted  to  encourage 
mental  effort,  but,  in  many  cases,  were  absolutely  peril- 
ous to  the  health  and  symmetrical  growth  of  the  chil- 
dren ;  that  the  schools  were  under  a  sleepy  supervision ; 
that  many  of  the  most  intelligent  and  wealthy  of  our 
citizens  had  become  estranged  from  their  welfare,  and 
that  the  teachers  of  the  schools,  although,  with  very  few 
exceptions,  persons  of  estimable  character  and  of  great 
private  worth,  yet  in  the  absence  of  all  opportunities  to 
qualify  themselves  for  the  performance  of  the  most  diffi- 
cult and  delicate  task,  which,  in  the  arrangements  of 
Providence,  is  committed  to  human  hands,  were,  necessa- 
rily, and  therefore  without  fault  of  their  own,  deeply  and 
widely  deficient  in  the  two  indispensable  prerequisites  for 
their  office,  viz.,  a  knowledge  of  the  human  mind,  as  the 
subject  of  improvement ;  and  a  knowledge  of  the  means 
best  adapted  wisely  to  unfold  and  direct  its  growing 
faculties.  To  expect  that  a  system,  animated  only  by  a 
feeble  principle  of  life,  and  that  life  in  irregular  action, 
could  be  restored  at  once  to  health  and  vigor,  would  be  a 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  495 

sure  preparation  for  disappointment.  It  is  now  twenty 
years,  since  the  absolute  government  of  Prussia,  under 
the  impulse  of  self-preservation,  entered  upon  the  work 
of  entirely  remodelling  their  Common  Schools,  so  as  to 
give  them  a  comprehensiveness  and  an  efficacy  which 
would  embrace  and  educate  every  child  in  the  kingdom. 
In  this  undertaking,  high  intelligence  has  been  aided,  at 
every  step,  by  unlimited  power  ;  and  yet  the  work  is  but 
just  completed ;  —  in  some  places  and  in  some  circum- 
stances of  detail,  I  believe,  not  yet  completed.  Their 
engine  of  reform  is  the  command  of  the  sovereign,  en- 
forced by  penalties ;  ours  is  the  intelligence  of  the 
people,  stimulated  by  duty.  Their  plan  has  the  advan- 
tage of  efficiency  and  despatch,  but  it  has  this  disad- 
vantage, that  what  the  ruler  may  decree  to-day,  his 
successor  may  revoke  to-morrow ;  ours  has  the  disad- 
vantage of  slowness  in  execution,  but  the  compensatory 
advantage  of  permanency,  when  accomplished.  Besides, 
if  our  schools  are  voluntarily  advanced,  through  the  intel- 
ligence of  the  people,  the  agents  themselves  will  be  bene- 
fited almost  as  much  as  the  objects.  These  considera- 
tions ought  to  satisfy  those  persons  who  seem  impatient 
of  delay,  and  who  think  that  any  Board  of  Education 
could  re-animate  our  system  in  one,  or  even  in  a  few 
years. 

Considering,  then,  the  description  of  the  means  to  be 
employed  for  raising  our  schools  to  a  reasonable  and  prac- 
ticable point  of  usefulness,  it  may  be  confidently  stated, 
that  the  efforts,  which  have  been  made,  in  different 
places,  have  accomplished  something  already,  and  have 
given  sure  auguries  of  a  speedier  progression  hereafter. 

In  my  circuit  this  year,  Nantucket  was  the  first  place 
visited.  The  town  contains  almost  10,000  inhabitants. 
When  there,  the  previous  season,  there  was  but  one  set 


49 G  THE   SECRET ARY7S 

of  public  schools  for  all  the  children.  To  them,  only 
children  over  the  age  of  six  years  were  admitted,  and  no 
public  provision  existed  for  the  education  of  those  below. 
During  the  last  year,  the  town  has  established  two  pri- 
mary schools  for  small  children,  and  also  a  school  (as  it 
is  denominated  in  the  statute)  for  the  benefit  of  all  the 
inhabitants  of  the  town.  To  the  last,  pupils  are  admitted 
on  passing  an  examination  in  the  branches  required  to 
be  taught  in  the  middle  or  secondary  schools.  The 
organization,  therefore,  is  now  perfect.  The  small  chil- 
dren are  provided  for,  by  themselves.  This  is  an  advan- 
tage, which  can  hardly  be  over-estimated.  For  the 
purpose  of  preserving  order  and  silence  in  schools,  com- 
posed of  scholars  of  all  ages,  it  becomes  almost  necessary 
to  practise  a  rigor  of  restraint  and  a  severity  of  discipline 
upon  the  small  children,  which  is  always  injurious  and 
often  cruel.  The  youngest  scholars  are,  constitutionally, 
most  active.  Their  proportion  of  brain  and  nervous  sys- 
tem, compared  with  the  whole  body,  is  much  the  great- 
est. Their  restlessness  does  not  proceed  from  volition, 
but  from  the  involuntary  impulses  of  nature.  They 
vibrate  at  the  slightest  touch  ;  and  they  can  no  more  help 
a  responsive  impulse  at  every  sight  and  sound,  than  they 
can  help  seeing  and  hearing  with  open  eyes  and  ears. 
What  aggravates  the  difficulty  is,  that  they  have  nothing 
to  do.  At  a  time  when  nature  designs  they  shall  be 
more  active  than  at  any  other  period  of  life,  a  stagna- 
tion of  all  the  powers  of  mind  and  body  is  enforced.  But 
while  the  heart  beats  and  the  blood  flows,  the  signs  of 
life  cannot  be  wholly  suppressed ;  and  therefore  the 
steady  working  of  nature's  laws  is  sure  to  furnish 
the  teacher  with  occasions  for  discipline.  If  it  would  be 
intolerably  irksome  for  any  of  the  large  scholars  to  sit 
still  for  half  a  day,  in  a  constrained  posture,  with  hands 


SECOND    ANNUAL   REPORT.  497 

unoccupied,  arid  eyes  looking  straight  into  vacancy,  how 
much  more  intolerable  is  it  for  the  small  ones !  Hence 
the  importance  of  having  such  a  gradation  of  schools,  in 
every  place  where  it  is  practicable,  as  has  been  lately 
established  in  Nantucket.  Another  invaluable  advantage 
of  having  three  grades  of  schools  is,  that  while  it  dimin- 
ishes, at  least  one-half,  the  number  of  classes  in  each 
school,  it  increases  the  number  in  each  class,  and  thus 
allows  the  teacher  to  devote  more  time  to  the  recitations 
and  to  the  oral  instruction  of  his  enlarged  classes.  An- 
other point,  of  great  importance  to  the  schools,  was  well 
illustrated  in  the  change  at  Nantucket.  When  I  was 
there  in  1837,  a  private  school  was  in  operation,  kept  by 
one  of  the  most  accomplished  instructors  in  the  State, 
and  sustained  at  great  expense  to  its  patrons.  When  the 
arrangement,  above  referred  to,  was  made,  this  gentleman 
was  employed  by  the  town  to  keep  the  town  school.  The 
private  school  was,  of  course,  given  up ;  but  he  carried 
with  him,  into  the  town  school,  most  of  his  former  pupils. 
And  he  now  educates  many  others,  who  could  not  afford 
the  expense  of  the  private  school.  Although,  in  such 
cases,  the  compensation  of  the  teacher  may  not  be  quite 
as  great,  nominally,  yet  it  will  probably  be  worth  as 
much ;  as  he  will  receive  it  directly  from  the  town,  in 
regular  instalments,  and  will  have  none  of  the  trouble  of 
collecting  bills. 

Within  the  last  year,  also,  every  schoolhouse  in  Nan- 
tucket has  been  provided  with  a  good  ventilator  and  with 
new  and  comfortable  seats.  This  leaves  little  to  be 
desired  in  that  town,  in  regard  to  the  places  where  the 
processes  of  education  are  carried  on.  Competent  teach- 
ers, fidelity  in  the  committee,  suitable  school-books,  libra- 
ries and  a  good  apparatus,  and  bringing  all  the  children 

VOL.  I.  32 


498  THE  SECRETARY'S 

within  the  beneficent  influences  of  the  school,  will  com- 
plete the  work. 

For  the  town  school,  an  extensive  and  valuable  appa- 
ratus has  been  provided,  and  also  some  of  a  less  costly 
description  for  the  primary  schools.  To  accomplish 
these  praiseworthy  purposes,  the  town,  last  year,  almost 
doubled  its  former  appropriation. 

Another  highly  gratifying  indication  of  increased  at- 
tention to  the  welfare  of  the  schools  has  been  given  by 
the  city  of  Salem.  A  year  ago,  the  schoolhouses  in  that 
city  were  without  ventilation,  and  many  of  them  with 
such  seats  as  excited  vivid  ideas  of  corporal  punishment, 
and  almost  prompted  one  to  ask  the  children  for  what 
offence  they  had  been  committed.  At  an  expense  of 
about  two  thousand  dollars,  the  seats  in  all  the  school- 
houses,  except  one,  have  been  reconstructed,  and  provi- 
sions for  ventilation  have  been  made.  I  am  told,  that 
the  effect  in  the  quiet,  attention  and  proficiency  of  the 
pupils,  was  immediately  manifested. 

In  many  other  places,  improvements  of  the  same  kind 
have  been  made,  though  to  a  less  extent  and  in  a  part 
only  of  the  houses.  It  would  be  a  great  mistake,  how- 
ever, to  suppose,  that  nothing  remains  to  be  done  in  this 
important  department  of  the  system  of  public  instruction. 
The  cases  mentioned  are  the  slightest  exceptions,  com- 
pared with  the  generality  of  the  neglect.  The  urgent 
reasons  for  making  the  report  on  schoolhouses,  the  last 
year,  still  continue.  In  the  important  point  of  ventila- 
tion, so  essential  to  the  health,  composure,  and  mental 
elasticity  of  the  pupils,  most  of  the  houses  remain  without 
change ;  except,  indeed,  that  very  undesirable  change 
which  has  been  wrought  by  time  and  the  elements  ;  —  or 
such  change  as  has  been  effected  by  stripping  off  the  ex- 
ternal covering  of  the  house,  on  some  emergency  for  fuel. 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  499 

The  children  must  continue  to  breathe  poisonous  air,  and 
to  sit  upon .  seats,  threatening  structural  derangement, 
until  parents  become  satisfied  that  a  little  money  may 
well  be  expended  to  secure  to  their  offspring  the  bless- 
ings of  sound  health,  a  good  conformation,  and  a  strong, 
quick-working  mind. 

A  highly  respectable  physician,  who,  for  several  years, 
has  attended  to  the  actual  results  of  bad  internal  ar- 
rangements and  bad  locations  for  schoolhouses  upon  the 
health  of  the  pupils,  took  measures,  during  the  past 
summer,  to  ascertain  with  exactness  the  relative  amount 
of  sickness  suffered  by  the  children,  in  a  given  period  of 
time,  in  two  annual  schools.  The  schools  were  selected 
on  account  of  their  proximity,  being  but  a  short  distance 
from  each  other ;  they  consisted  of  very  nearly  the  same 
number  of  children,  belonging  to  families  in  the  same 
condition  of  life,  and  no  general  physical  causes  were 
known  to  exist,  which  should  have  distinguished  them 
from  each  other,  in  regard  to  the  health  of  the  pupils. 
But  one  house  was  dry  and  well  ventilated;  the  other 
damp,  and  so  situated  as  to  render  ventilation  impracti- 
cable. In  the  former,  during  a  period  of  forty-five  days, 
five  scholars  were  absent,  from  sickness,  to  the  amount  in 
the  whole  of  twenty  days.  In  the  latter,  during  the  same 
period  of  time  and  for  the  same  cause,  nineteen  children 
were  absent,  to  an  amount  in  the  whole  of  one  hundred 
and  forty-five  days  ;  —  that  is  almost  four  times  the  num- 
ber of  children,  and  more  than  seven  times  the  amount 
of  sickness  ;  and  the  appearances  of  the  children  not  thus 
detained  by  sickness,  indicated  a  marked  difference  in 
their  condition  as  to  health.  On  such  a  subject,  where 
all  the  causes  in  operation  may  not  be  known,  it  would 
be  un philosophical  to  draw  general  conclusions  from  a 
particular  observation.  No  reason,  however,  can  be  di- 


500  THE  SECRETARY'S 

vined,  why  this  single  result  should  not  fairly  represent 
the  average  of  any  given  number  of  years.  Similar  re- 
sults for  successive  years  must  satisfy  any  one,  respecting 
the  true  cause  of  such  calamities  ;  if,  indeed,  any  one  can 
remain  sceptical  in  regard  to  the  connection  between  good 
health  and  pure  air. 

'  The  committee  who  take  charge  of  the  Primary  Schools 
in  the  city  of  Boston,  established,  in  the  month  of  Septem- 
ber last,  a  "  Model  School."  To  this  school  it  is  intended 
to  devote  an  unusual  share  of  attention.  It  is  under  the 
immediate  supervision  of  gentlemen,  intelligent  and  highly 
interested  in  its  success.  Their  object  is  to  select  the  best 
books,  to  learn,  as  far  as  possible,  the  true  periods  of  alter- 
nation between  study  and  exercise  for  young  children, 
and  to  improve  upon  existing  processes  for  moral  and 
intellectual  training.  When  their  plans  are  somewhat 
matured  by  observation  and  experience,  it  is  their  inten- 
tion to  bring  the  teachers  of  the  other  Primary  Schools 
(of  which  there  are  more  than  eighty  in  the  city)  in 
regular  succession  into  this  school,  to  familiarize  them 
with  whatever,  upon  experiment,  shall  be  found  to  suc- 
ceed well.  Although  it  cannot  be  doubted,  that  this  en- 
terprise, under  the  judicious  management  of  the  commit- 
tee, will  prove  very  beneficial,  yet  it  is  hardly  rational  to 
anticipate,  that  it  will  supersede  the  necessity  of  a  Normal 
School  for  the  city. 

I  cannot  doubt,  that  the  Board  will  hear,  with  lively 
gratification,  other  evidence  of  an  increased  interest  in 
this  subject.  Considering  how  inadequate  to  the  wants 
of  the  whole  community  a  county  meeting  —  annual 
only  —  on  the  subject  of  Education,  must  necessarily  be, 
several  of  the  county  conventions  appointed  large  and 
most  respectable  committees  to  prepare  and  deliver,  or 
cause  to  be  prepared  and  delivered,  a  lecture  in  the  dif- 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  501 

ferent  towns  of  the  respective  counties  ;  —  or,  where 
towns  were  large,  then  in  different  places  in  the  same 
town.  In  pursuance  of  this  excellent  plan,  such  lectures 
have  already  been  delivered,  or  lecturers  are  now  engaged 
in  delivering  them,  in  the  counties  of  Nantucket,  Hainp- 
den,  Hampshire,  Franklin,  Worcester,  and  to  some  extent 
in  Essex. 

During  the  last  summer,  too,  a  few  gentlemen  in  the 
city  of  Boston  adopted  measures  to  procure  the  delivery 
of  a  course  of  weekly  lectures  for  the  benefit  of  teachers 
in  the  city.  This  course  commenced  about  the  middle  of 
October  last,  and  still  continues.  Engaged,  in  country  and 
city,  in  this  voluntary  and  gratuitous  labor,  are  gentle- 
men, who  have  been,  or  are,  members  of  the  State  and 
National  Legislatures,  counsellors  at  law,  physicians, 
clergymen  of  all  denominations,  experienced  and  long- 
approved  teachers,  and  some  of  the  most  popular  writers 
in  the  State.  All  these  intelligent  and  forecasting  men, 
who  see  that  future  consequences  can  alone  be  regulated 
by  attention  to  present  causes,  are  profoundly  convinced, 
that  unless  juvenile  feelings,  in  this  State  and  Country, 
are  assiduously  trained  to  an  observance  of  law  and  a 
reverence  for  justice,  it  will  be  impossible  to  restrain 
adult  passions  from  individual  debasement  and  public 
commotion.  The  course  of  a  stream,  which  a  thousand 
men  cannot  obstruct,  as  it  flows  into  the  ocean,  may  be 
turned  by  a  child  at  the  fountain.  Above,  it  will  yield  to 
the  guidance  of  a  hand ;  below,  its  flood  will  sweep  works 
and  workmen  away. 

There  are  other  indications,  that  public  opinion  on  this 
subject  is  advancing  in  the  right  direction.  More  com- 
mittees are  inquiring  into  the  qualifications  of  candidates 
for  teaching,  instead  of  taking  such  qualifications  for 
granted.  Persons  who  had  taught  school  a  dozen  win- 


502  THE  SECRETARY'S 

ters  have  been  set  aside  for  incompetency  in  the  element- 
ary branches.  The  law,  requiring  committees  to  visit 
the  schools,  has  been  better  observed  than  ever  before ; 
and  teachers  are  realizing  the  benefit  of  such  visitations, 
in  the  encouragement  and  stimulus  they  have  supplied  to 
the  pupils.  Many  teachers  are  more  justly  appreciating 
the  true  elevation  and  responsibleness  of  their  vocation ; 
and  are  animated  by  those  high  motives,  whose  preroga- 
tive it  is  to  convert  toil  into  pleasure. 

On  the  reverse  side  of  this  picture,  however,  it  is  my 
duty  to  present,  that  of  the  twenty-nine  rich  and  popu- 
lous towns,  bound  by  law  to  keep  a  school,  at  least  ten 
months  in  each  year,  "  for  the  benefit  of  all  the  inhabit- 
ants of  the  town,"  and  which  were  reported,  last  year, 
as  violating  this  law,  by  non-compliance,  only  two,  viz. 
Nantucket  and  Taunton,  have  since  established  the 
schools  required.  It  will  be  recollected,  that  this  class 
of  towns  takes  precedence  of  almost  all  the  others  in 
wealth ;  that  they  expend  a  far  less  proportion  of  money, 
per  scholar,  for  the  support  of  public  schools,  than  the 
poorer  and  more  sparsely  populated  towns,  while,  at  the 
same  time,  they  expend  a  far  greater  proportion  of  money 
for  private  schools.  At  the  rate  of  two  in  a  year,  it  will 
take  about  fifteen  years  for  all  the  towns  in  this  class  to 
comply  with  the  law ;  —  a  length  of  probation,  it  is  to  be 
feared,  which  will  tend  to  harden  rather  than  reform  the 
delinquents. 

Sufficient  time  has  not  yet  elapsed  to  allow  the  practi- 
cal results  of  last  winter's  legislation  to  be  developed. 
The  law  for  the  compensation  of  school  committees  was 
not  enacted,  until  after  the  committees  for  the  current 
year  had  been  elected.  The  reasons,  which,  in  former 
years,  had  deterred  so  many  competent  men  from  accept- 
ing that  meritorious  office,  still  existed.  The  ensuing 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  503 

annual  elections  will  show  how  far  the  public  will  con- 
sent, that  any  man,  incompetent  for,  or  heartless  in,  the 
performance  of  this  responsible  duty,  shall  be  intrusted 
with  it  and  receive  its  compensation.  Nor  has  the  time 
yet  arrived,  at  which  all  school  committees  are  to  make  to 
their  respective  towns  a  report,  "  designating  particular 
improvements  and  defects  in  the  methods  or  means  of 
education,  and  stating  such  facts  and  suggestions  in  rela- 
tion thereto,  as,  in  their  opinion,  will  best  promote  the 
interests  and  increase  the  usefulness  of  the  schools." 
Great  good  will  unquestionably  result  from  each  of  these 
provisions. 

The  "  Register,"  prescribed  by  the  law  of  last  winter, 
"  to  be  faithfully  kept,  in  all  the  town  and  district  schools 
in  the  Commonwealth,"  has  been  almost  universally  (one 
or  two  places  only,  so  far  as  I  have  learned,  undertaking 
to  absolve  themselves  from  a  compliance  with  the  law) 
introduced  into  the  schools,  with  excellent  effect.  Skilful 
teachers  find  it  a  valuable  auxiliary  in  securing  greater 
regularity  in  the  attendance  of  the  scholars.  By  the 
Report  of  last  year,  it  appeared  that  "  a  portion  of  the 
children,  dependent  wholly  upon  the  common  schools, 
absented  themselves  from  the  winter  school,  either  per- 
manently or  occasionally,  equal  to  a  permanent  absence 
of  about  one-third  part  of  their  whole  number ;  and  a 
portion  absented  themselves  from  the  summer  schools, 
either  permanently  or  occasionally,  equal  to  a  permanent 
absence  of  considerably  more  than  two-fifths  of  their  whole 
number."  Thus  after  all  the  labor  and  expense  of  estab- 
lishing, maintaining,  and  supervising  the  schools  have 
been  incurred,  after  the  schools  have  been  brought  to 
the  very  doors  of  the  children,  the  school  itself  is  made 
to  suffer  in  all  its  departments  by  the  inconstant  attend- 
ance of  the  children,  and  the  children  suffer,  in  habits 


504  THE  SECRETARY'S 

and  character,  from  inconstant  attendance  upon  the 
school.  Whatever  diminishes  this  evil  is  cheaply  bought, 
though  at  much  cost.  The  keeping  of  a  daily  Register  is 
also  the  only  means  by  which  the  committees  can  be 
enabled  to  make  accurate,  instead  of  conjectural,  returns, 
for  the  Annual  Abstracts.  The  "Register"  and  the 
"  Annual  Abstract "  are  so  far  parts  of  a  whole,  that  both 
should  be  continued  or  both  abolished.  The  Abstracts 
are  prepared  as  statistics  for  legislative  action  and  eco- 
nomical science.  If  true,  they  will  evince  philosophical 
principles  to  be  the  basis  of  wise  measures.  But  if  false, 
they  lead  to  practical  errors,  with  scientific  certainty; 
and  they  annul  the  chance  which  ignorance  enjoys  of 
being  sometimes  right  by  accident  or  mistake. 

The  Board  are  already  aware  that  the  '•'•Form  "  of  the 
Register,  prepared  this  year,  was  sent  out  in  single  sheets, 
and  for  one  year  only,  that  its  fitness  might  be  tested  ; 
and  that  "  in  order  to  establish  a  more  perfect  and  per- 
manent Register,  all  persons  were  invited  to  suggest  im- 
provements." In  the  circulars  sent  to  the  school  commit- 
tees, this  invitation  was  repeated.  Verbally  or  in  writing, 
I  have  received  a  variety  of  suggestions  for  modifying 
its  form.  Some  of  these  suggestions  are  diametrically 
opposite  to  each  other,  even  w'here  they  come  from  towns 
lying  side  by  side,  and  whose  general  circumstances 
(except  in  the  amount  of  attention  bestowed  upon  their 
schools)  are  similar.  The  number  of  towns  in  the 
country  is  precisely  equal,  which,  on  one  side,  declare  it 
to  be  too  complicated  and  particular;  and,  on  the  other, 
suggest,  as  improvements,  the  addition  of  a  number  of 
new  items.  I  mention  these  particulars,  that  the  towns 
may  know  how  impossible  is  a  conformity  to  views  so 
conflicting.  As  some  teachers  and  school  committees  do 
not  seem  to  be  aware  of  the  advantages  of  keeping  so 


SECOND    ANNUAL    REPORT.  505 

full  a  Register  as  has  been  proposed,  perhaps  it  may  be 
expedient  to  prepare  a  Form,  embracing  those  facts  only, 
of  which  a  record  should  be  kept,  in  every  school ;  and 
then  to  leave  it  to  those  who  more  fully  appreciate  its 
uses,  to  keep  such  a  supplementary  Register  as  they  may 
think  best. 

The  report  on  Schoolhouses,  made  by  me  to  the  Board 
in  March  last,  detailing,  among  other  things,  a  plan  for 
a  union  of  school  districts  and  a  gradation  of  schools, 
in  places  where  the  compactness  of  the  population  would 
allow,  was  followed  by  the  act  of  the  Legislature  of 
April  25th,  authorizing  a  union  of  school  districts  for 
the  important  purposes  specified.  A  few  towns  have 
already  acted  upon  that  plan,  and  the  public  mind  is 
earnestly  called  to  it  by  the  friends  of  education  in  other 
places.  Wherever  it  can  be  adopted,  it  will  tend  to 
diminish  the  evils  and  to  increase  the  efficiency  of  our 
educational  system. 

But  were  all  the  territory  of  the  State  judiciously 
divided  into  districts  ;  were  there  a  just  gradation  in  the 
schools  ;  were  every  schoolhouse  good  ;  had  every  school 
the  best  teacher  that  could  be  found,  and  the  guidance 
and  encouragement  of  the  most  wise  and  assiduous  school 
committee ;  —  still,  all  these  would  be  only  preliminary 
steps  in  the  numerous  and  complicated  processes  of  Edu- 
cation. The  true  medium  in  the  government  of  schools, 
between  austere  demeanor  and  severity  on  the  one  hand, 
and,  on  the  other,  a  facile  temper,  yielding  to  every  press- 
ure and  just  according  to  the  pressure  ;  —  the  great 
questions  of  rewards  and  punishments,  whose  influence 
spreads  out  over  such  wide  tracts  of  feeling  and  charac- 
ter in  after-life ;  —  the  selection  of  motives  to  enkindle 
the  ardor  of  children  in  their  studies,  together  with  the 
precedents  of  these  motives  in  regard  to  each  other,  that 


506  THE  SECRETARY'S 

is,  whether  the  minds  of  children  should  be  forever  turned 
outwards  to  the  worldly  advantages  of  wealth,  office,  rank, 
display,  as  incitements  to  duty ;  or  inwards,  towards  the 
perception  of  right  and  wrong  in  their  own  hearts,  and 
to  the  noiseless,  boundless  rewards  which  nature  gives 
for  conscientious  conduct,  in  spite  of  the  laws,  or  power, 
or  hate  of  men  ;  —  the  one  course,  setting  the  applause 
of  the  world  before  rectitude,  the  other  reversing  their 
position  :  —  and  in  regard  to  processes,  more  intellectual 
in  their  character;  —  such  as  the  succession  of  studies 
best  tending  to  cultivate  the  mental  powers,  in  the  order 
of  their  natural  development ;  —  the  question  of  a  more 
or  less  rapid  alternation  from  one  study  to  another ;  — 
the  degrees  in  which  either  the  instruction  or  government 
of  a  school  should  be  modified  so  as  to  be  adapted  to 
peculiarities  of  individual  character ;  —  all  these,  and 
many  more  points,  would  remain  to  be  settled,  before  the 
outlines  were  filled  up  of  any  thing  worthy  to  be  called 
a  philosophical  plan  of  Education.  Surveying  the  subject, 
therefore,  in  the  extent  and  diversity  of  its  parts,  the  Only 
practicable  and  useful  course  seemed  to  be,  to  select  some 
particular  topic,  and,  as  far  as  possible,  to  collect  facts, 
educe  principles,  and  offer  hints  for  practice.  Science 
must  grow  out  of  observation,  art  out  of  science. 

From  the  earliest  observations  made  on  visiting  schools, 
(and  such  as  I  have  visited  were,  probably,  above  the 
average  of  schools  in  the  State,)  I  have  been  impressed 
with  the  obvious  want  of  intelligence,  in  the  reading- 
classes,  respecting  the  subject-matter  of  the  lessons.  With 
some  exceptions,  I  regret  to  say,  that  the  eyes,  features, 
and  motions  of  the  readers  have  indicated  only  bodily 
sensations,  not  mental  activity  ;  while  the  volume  of  voice 
emitted  has  too  closely  resembled  those  mechanical  con- 
trivances for  the  transmission  of  fluids,  which,  with  ad  mi- 


SECOND  ANNUAL   REPORT.  607 

rable  precision,  discharge  equal  quantities  in  equal  times. 
At  the  same  time,  I  was  sure,  that,  had  the  subject-matter 
of  the  reading-lesson  been  understood,  it  would  have 
opened  a  fountain  of  pleasurable  emotions  within,  whose 
streams  would  have  flowed  out  through  every  channel  of 
expression.  And,  on  examination,  I  have  often  found 
that  the  black  and  white  page  of  the  book  was  the  outer 
boundary  of  the  reader's  thoughts,  and  a  barrier  to  arrest 
their  progress,  instead  of  being  a  vehicle  to  carry  them 
onward  or  upward  into  whatever  region  the  author  might 
have  expatiated.  When  the  pupils  were  directed  to  the 
subject-matter  of  the  reading-lesson,  to  the  orderly  un- 
folding of  its  parts,  as  branches  proceeding  from  a  com- 
mon trunk,  I  have  found  them  committing  mistakes 
which,  though  ludicrous  as  facts,  were  most  lamentable 
as  indications. 

Deeming  the  mode,  and  the  degree  of  success  found  to 
attend  it,  of  teaching  our  children  the  orthography  and 
significance  of  their  mother-tongue,  to  be  the  most  im- 
portant question  which  could  be  put  in  regard  to  their 
intellectual  culture,  I  determined  to  make  those  points 
the  main  objects  of  inquiry  in  my  annual  visit  into  the 
different  counties.  For  distinctness'  sake,  I  proposed, 
among  others,  the  two  following  questions  to  the  school 
committees  of  the  several  towns  in  the  State. 

1st.  "  Are  scholars  in  your  schools  kept  in  spelling 
classes  from  the  time  of  their  earliest  combination  of  let- 
ters, up  to  the  time  of  their  leaving-  school ;  or  what  is  the 
course  ordinarily  pursued  in  regard  to  teaching  orthog- 
raphy, and  how  long  is  it  continued?  " 

2d.  "  Are  there  defects  in  teaching  scholars  to  read? 
Tliis  inquiry  is  not  made  in  regard  to  the  pronunciation 
of  words  and  the  modulation  of  the  voice.  But  do  the 
scholars  fail  to  understand  the  meaning  of  the  words  they 


THE  SECRETARY'S 

read  ?  Do  they  fail  to  master  the  sense  of  the  reading- 
lessons  ?  Is  there  a  presence  in  the  minds  of  the  schol- 
ars, when  reading,  of  the  ideas  and  feelings  intended  to 
be  conveyed  and  excited  by  the  author  ?  " 

lu  answer  to  another  question,  not  here  quoted,  relative 
to  the  ages  within  which  children  attend  our  public 
schoots,  I  have  learnt,  that  exclusive  regulations,  founded 
on  age,  exist  in  but  very  few  towns  —  probably  in  not 
more  than  fifteen  or  twenty  —  in  the  State.  And  although 
the  great  majority  of  the  children  in  the  schools  are 
between  the  ages  of  four  and  sixteen,  yet  in  almost  all 
the  towns  they  are  allowed  to  attend  both  earlier  and 
later,  and  they  are  found  from  three,  and  sometimes  from 
two  years  of  age,  up  to  twenty-one  years,  very  frequently, 
and  sometimes  to  twenty-four  or  twenty-five.  I  learn, 
also,  that,  with  scarcely  a  single  exception  in  the  whole 
State,  the  scholars  are  kept  in  spelling-classes,  or  they 
spell  daily  from  their  reading-lessons,  from  the  time 
of  their  earliest  combination  of  letters,  up  to  the  time  of 
their  leaving  school ;  and  yet,  if  testimony,  derived  from 
a  thousand  sources,  and  absolutely  uniform,  can  be  relied 
on,  there  is  a  Babel-like  diversity  in  the  spelling  of  our 
language. 

It  is  impossible  to  ascertain  with  any  considerable 
degree  of  precision  the  percentage  of  words  in  ordinary 
use  which  the  children  are  unable  to  spell ;  but  it  seems 
to  be  the  general  opinion  of  the  most  competent  observers, 
that  the  schools  have  retrograded  within  the  last  genera- 
tion or  half-generation  in  regard  to  orthography.  Nor 
is  the  condition  of  the  schools  better  in  regard  to  read- 
ing, as  will  hereafter  be  shown. 

The  evil  of  incorrect  spelling  and  unintelligent  reading 
is,  by  no  means,  wholly  imputable  to  teachers.  It  springs, 
in  part,  from  the  use  of  books  ill  adapted  to  the  different 


8ECOND    ANNUAL    REPORT.  509 

stages  of  growth  in  youthful  minds.  Another  cause  con- 
sists in  a  most  pernicious  error  on  the  part  of  parents  in 
regard  to  the  true  objects  of  reading.  Many  teachers 
have  assured  me  that  they  are  perfectly  aware  that  the 
time  spent  in  reading  is  mainly  lost ;  but  that  the  usages 
of  the  school  and  the  demands  of  the  district  prohibit 
them — perhaps  under  penalty  of  dismission — from  adopt- 
ing a  better  mode.  It  is  said,  that  the  first  and  only  in- 
quiry made  by  parents  of  their  children  is,  "  how  many 
times  and  how  much  have  you  read  ? "  not  "  what  have  you 
read  about  ?  "  A  question  like  the  last  presupposes  some 
judgment  and  some  ability  to  follow  it  up  with  further 
inquiries  ;  but  anybody  can  put  the  first,  for  it  is  an  easy 
problem  which  solves  the  ratio  of  mental  progress  by  the 
number  of  pages  mechanically  gone  over.  The  children's 
minds  are  not  looked  into,  to  see  what  new  operations 
they  can  accurately  perform  ;  but  the  inquiry  relates  only 
to  the  amount  of  labor  done  by  the  organs  of  speech  ;  — 
as  though  so  many  turns  of  the  bodily  machine  would 
yield,  perforce,  a  corresponding  amount  of  mental  prod- 
uct. It  is  characteristic  of  the  learned  professions,  that 
the  person  employed  directs  the  employer ;  and  it  is  ear- 
estly  to  be  hoped,  that  teachers  will  soon  deservedly  win 
so  much  of  the  confidence  of  the  community,  that  they 
will  no  longer  feel  constrained  to  practise  methods  they 
know  to  be  valueless,  in  order  to  harmonize  with  opinions 
they  know  to  be  pernicious. 

It  is  probable,  also,  that  this  mischief  may  have  been 
aggravated,  in  those  places  where  there  is  a  gradation  of 
schools,  by  the  conditions,  prescribed  in  their  regulations, 
for  advancing  from  one  school  to  another.  One  important 
fact,  I  have  learned,  is,  that  in  places  containing  in  the 
aggregate  not  less  than  one  hundred  thousand  inhabitants, 
(about  one-seventh  of  the  population  of  the  State,)  a  con- 


510  THE  SECRETARY'S 

dition  for  rising  from  one  school  to  another  is,  either  in 
express  words  or  in  substance,  that  the  candidate  shall  be 
able  to  "  read  fluently."  Under  such  a  rule,  should  a 
strong  desire  exist  to  advance  children  to  a  higher  school, 
there  is  great  danger  that  the  value  of  intelligent  reading 
will  be  sacrificed  to  the  worthlessness  of  mere  "fluent " 
reading. 

In  this  State,  where  the  schools  are  open  to  all,  an  in- 
ability to  spell  the  commonly  used  words  in  our  language 
justly  stamps  the  deficient  mind  with  the  stigma  of  illit- 
eracy. Notwithstanding  the  intrinsic  difficulty  of  master- 
ing our  orthography,  there  must  be  some  defect  in  the 
manner  of  teaching  it ;  —  otherwise,  this  daily  attention 
of  the  children  to  the  subject,  from  the  commencement 
to  the  end  of  their  school-going  life,  would  make  them 
adepts  in  the  mystery  of  spelling,  except  in  cases  of  men- 
tal incapacity.  Anomalous,  arbitrary,  contradictory,  as 
is  the  formation  of  the  words  of  our  language  from  its 
letters,  yet  it  is  the  blessing  of  the  children,  that  they 
know  not  what  they  undertake,  when  they  begin  the  labor. 

But,  however  deeply  we  may  be  mortified  at  the  general 
inability  of  our  youth  to  spell  well,  it  is  the  lightest  of  all 
regrets,  compared  with  the  calamity  of  their  pretending  to 
read  what  they  fail  to  understand.  Language  is  not  merely 
a  necessary  instrument  of  civilization,  past  or  prospective, 
but  it  is  an  indispensable  condition  of  our  existence  as 
rational  beings.  We  are  accustomed  to  speak  with  admi- 
ration of  those  assemblages  of  things,  we  call  the  neces- 
saries, the  comforts,  the  blessings  of  life,  without  thinking 
that  language  is  a  pre-necessary  to  them  all.  It  requires 
a  union  of  two  things,  entirely  distinct  in  themselves,  to 
confer  the  highest  attribute  of  human  greatness  ;  —  in 
the  first  place,  a  creative  mind,  revolving,  searching,  re- 
forming, perfecting,  within  its  own  silent  recesses ;  and 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  511 

then  such  power  over  the  energy  and  copiousness  of  lan- 
guage, as  can  bring  into  life  whatever  was  prepared  in 
darkness,  and  can  transfer  it  to  the  present  or  the  absent, 
to  contemporaries  or  posterity.  Thucydides  makes  Peri- 
cles say,  that  "  one  who  forms  a  judgment  upon  any  point, 
but  cannot  explain  himself  clearly  to  the  people,  might 
as  well  have  never  thought  at  all  on  the  subject."  The 
highest  strength  of  understanding  and  justness  of  feeling, 
without  fitting  language  to  make  themselves  manifest,  are 
but  as  the  miser's  hoard,  without  even  the  reversion  of 
benefit  we  may  ultimately  expect  from  the  latter.  And 
for  all  social  purposes,  thought  and  expression  are  de- 
pendent, each  upon  the  other.  Ideas  without  words  are 
valueless  to  the  public ;  and  words  without  ideas  have 
this  mischievous  attribute,  that  they  inflict  the  severest 
pains  and  penalties  on  those  who  are  most  innocent  of 
thus  abusing  them. 

This  is  not  a  place  to  speak  of  the  nature  and  utility 
of  language,  any  further  than  is  rigidly  necessary  to  an 
exposition  of  the  best  mode  of  acquiring  and  the  true 
object  in  using  it.  Within  this  limit,  it  may  be  ob- 
served, that  we  arrive  at  knowledge  in  two  ways  :  first, 
by  our  own  observation  of  phenomena  without,  and  our 
own  consciousness  of  what  passes  within  us  ;  and  we 
seek  words  aptly  to  designate  whatever  has  been  observed, 
whether  material  or  mental.  In  this  case,  the  objects  and 
events  are  known  to  us,  before  the  names,  or  phrases, 
which  describe  them  ;  or,  secondly,  we  see  or  hear  words, 
and  through  a  knowledge  of  their  diversified  applications 
we  become  acquainted  with  objects  and  phenomena,  of 
which  we  should  otherwise  have  remained  forever  igno- 
rant. In  this  case,  the  words  precede  a  knowledge  of 
the  things  they  designate.  In  one  case  we  are  introduced 
to  words  through  things  ;  in  the  other,  to  things,  through 


512  THE  SECRETARY'S 

words  ;  but  when  once  both  have  been  strongly  associated 
together,  the  presence  of  either  will  suggest  its  correla- 
tive. The  limited  fund  of  knowledge  laid  open  to  us  by 
the  former  mode  bears  no  assignable  proportion  to  the 
immense  resources  proffered  us  by  the  latter.  Without 
language,  we  should  know  something  of  the  more  obtru- 
sive phenomena,  within  reach  of  the  senses,  but  an  im- 
penetrable wall  of  darkness  would  lie  beyond  their  narrow 
horizon.  With  language,  that  horizon  recedes  until  the 
expanse  of  the  globe,  with  its  continents,  its  air,  its  oceans, 
and  all  that  are  therein,  lies  under  our  eye,  like  an  adja- 
cent landscape.  Without  language,  our  own  memory 
dates  the  beginning  of  time,  and  the  record  of  our  own 
momentary  existence  contains  all  that  we  can  know  of 
universal  history.  But  with  language,  antiquity  re-lives  ; 
we  are  spectators  at  the  world's  creation  ;  we  are  present 
with  our  first  progenitors,  when  the  glory  of  a  new  life 
beamed  from  their  inanimate  frames  ;  the  long  train  of 
historic  events  passes  in  review  before  us  ;  we  behold  the 
multiplication  and  expansion  of  our  race,  from  individu- 
als to  nations,  from  patriarchs  to  dynasties  ;  we  see  their 
temporal  vicissitudes  and  moral  transformations  ;  the  bil- 
lowy rise  and  fall  of  empires ;  the  subsidence  of  races, 
whose  power  and  numbers  once  overshadowed  the  earth  ; 
the  emergence  of  feeble  and  despised  tribes  into  wide-ex- 
tended dominion  ;  we  see  the  dealings  of  God  with  men, 
and  of  men  with  each  other ;  —  all,  in  fine,  which  has 
been  done  and  suffered  by  our  kindred  nature,  in  arms, 
arts,  science,  philosophy,  judicature,  government ;  and 
we  see  them,  not  by  their  own  light  only,  but  by  the 
clearer  light  reflected  upon  them  from  subsequent  times. 
What  contrast  could  be  more  striking,  than  that  between 
an  unlettered  savage  and  a  philosopher,  —  the  one  im- 
prisoned, the  other  privileged,  —  in  the  halls  of  the  same 


SECOND    ANNUAL   REPORT.  513 

library ;  —  the  one  compelled  by  fear  to  gaze  upon  the 
pages  of  a  book,  the  other  impatient  for  the  pleasure  of 
doing  it !  As  the  former  moves  his  reluctant  eye  down- 
wards over  successive  lines,  he  sees  nothing  but  ink  and 
paper.  Beyond,  it  is  vacancy.  But  to  the  eye  of  the 
philosopher,  the  sombre  pages  are  magically  illuminated. 
By  their  light  he  sees  other  lands  and  times.  All  that 
filled  his  senses  before  he  opened  the  revealing  page  is 
only  an  atom  of  the  world,  in  which  he  now  expatiates. 
He  is  made  free  of  the  universe.  A  sentiment,  uttered 
thousands  of  years  ago,  if  touched  by  the  spirit  of  human- 
ity, falls  freshly  upon  his  responsive  bosom.  The  fathers 
of  the  world  come  out  of  the  past  and  stand  around  him 
and  hold  converse  with  him,  as  it  were,  face  to  face.  Old 
eloquence  and  poetry  are  again  heard  and  sung.  Sages 
imbue  him  with  their  wisdom  ;  martyrs  inspire  him  by 
their  example ;  and  the  authors  of  discoveries,  each  one 
of  whom  won  immortality  by  the  boon  he  conferred  upon 
the  race,  become  his  teachers.  Truths  which  it  took 
ages  to  perfect  and  establish,  sciences  elaborated  by  the 
world's  intellect,  are  passed  over  to  him,  finished  and 
whole.  This  presents  but  the  faintest  contrast  between 
the  savage  and  the  philosopher,  looking  at  the  same  books, 
and,  to  a  superficial  observer,  occupied  alike. 

To  prepare  children  for  resembling  the  philosopher, 
rather  than  the  savage,  it  is  well  to  begin  early,  but  it  is 
far  more  important  to  begin  right ;  and  the  school  is  the 
place  for  children  to  form  an  invincible  habit  of  never 
using  the  organs  of  speech,  by  themselves,  and  as  an 
apparatus,  detached  from,  and  independent  of,  the  mind. 
The  school  is  the  place  to  form  a  habit  of  observing  dis- 
tinctions between  words  and  phrases,  and  of  adjusting  the 
language  used  to  various  extents  of  meaning.  It  is  the 
place  where  they  are  to  commence  the  great  art  of  adapt- 


514  THE  SECRETARY'S 

ing  words  to  ideas  and  feelings,  just  as  we  apply  a  meas- 
uring instrument  to  objects  to  be  measured.  Then,  in 
after-life,  they  will  never  venture  upon  the  use  of  words 
which  they  do  not  understand  ;  and  they  will  be  enabled 
to  use  language,  co-extensive  with  their  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings, —  language  which  shall  mark  off  so  much  of  any 
subject  as  they  wish  to  exhibit,  as  plainly  as  though  they 
could  have  walked  round  it  and  set  up  landmarks. 

There  is  time  enough  devoted  to  exercises  on  language 
in  our  schools,  to  have  enabled  every  one  of  that  numer- 
ous class  of  citizens,  whose  attainments  and  good  sense 
entitle  them  to  be  elected  to  municipal  offices  or  to  some 
station  in  the  government,  to  prepare  written  documents, 
to  draught  petitions,  reports  and  so  forth,  upon  all  ordinary 
subjects,  not  professional  or  technical.  Yet  how  many 
men  of  excellent  judgment  find  themselves  unable  to 
express  their  thoughts  clearly  and  forcibly,  in  speech  or 
writing,  because  they  have  never  been  accustomed  to 
apply  language  to  mental  operations.  Every  man,  con- 
versant with  the  profession  of  the  law,  knows  that  no 
inconsiderable  portion  of  those  litigated  cases,  which 
burden  courts  and  embroil  neighborhoods,  arises  from 
some  misapprehension  of  the  meaning  of  the  language, 
used  by  the  parties,  in  oral  or  written  contracts.  The 
time  spent  by  the  scholars  in  reading,  from  the  age  of 
eight  or  ten  to  sixteen  years,  is  amply  sufficient  to  enrich 
their  minds  with  a  great  amount  of  various  and  useful 
knowledge,  without  encroaching  one  hour  upon  other 
accustomed  studies. 

There  is  another  fact,  most  pertinent  to  this  part  of 
the  subject.  It  is  well  known  that  science  itself,  among 
scientific  men,  can  never  advance  far  beyond  a  scientific 
.language  in  which  to  record  its  laws  and  principles.  An 
unscientific  language,  like  the  Chinese,  will  keep  a  peo- 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  515 

pie  unscientific  forever.  So  the  knowledge  of  a  people 
on  any  subject  cannot  far  exceed  the  compass  of  the 
language  which  they  fully  comprehend.  If  what  arc 
called  the  exact  sciences  do  not  depend  upon  the  exact- 
ness of  the  language  they  use,  all  exactness  in  other 
sciences  does.  Nor  is  it  a  fact  of  less  importance,  that 
language  re-acts  upon  the  mind  that  uses  it.  It  is  like 
the  garments  in  which  some  nations  clothe  themselves, 
which  shape  the  very  limbs  that  draw  them  on.  Men 
are  generally  very  willing  to  modify  or  change  their 
opinions  and  views,  while  they  exist  in  thought  merely, 
but  when  once  formally  expressed,  the  language  chosen 
often  becomes  the  mould  of  the  opinion.  The  opinion 
fills  the  mould,  but  cannot  break  it  and  assume  a  new 
form.  Thus  errors  of  thought  and  of  life  originate  in 
impotence  of  language. 

The  English  language  has  been  estimated  to  contain 
seventy  or  eighty  thousand  words  in  reputable  use.  A 
knowledge  of  so  many  of  these  words  as  are  in  common 
use,  with  a  power  of  summoning  them,  like  trained 
bands,  to  come  at  the  bidding  of  thought,  arises  from  the 
smallest  beginnings.  The  distance  is  so  immense  be- 
tween the  first,  rude  articulation  of  an  infant,  and  the 
splendid  and  law-giving  utterance  of  an  eloquent  man, 
that  we  could  hardly  believe,  beforehand,  that  the  two 
extremes  had  reference  to  the  same  individual.  To  gain 
time,  by  shortening  the  distance  between  these  extremes, 
or  by  removing  obstacles  and  thus  accelerating  progress 
from  the  former  to  the  latter,  is  one  of  the  most  appro- 
priate labors  of  education.  The  hints  which  follow  are 
offered  with  diffidence ;  in  the  hope,  however,  that  they 
may  prove  useful  themselves,  or  be  suggestive  to  other 
minds  of  that  which  is  better. 

The  process  of  learning  to  spell  our  language  is  so  im- 


516  THE  SECRETARY'S 

perceptibly  lost  in  that  of  learning  to  read  it,  that  the 
two  can  best  be  considered  together. 

One  preliminary  truth  is  to  be  kept  steadily  in  view  in 
all  the  processes  of  teaching,  and  in  the  preparation  of 
all  its  instruments  ;  viz.,  that,  though  much  may  be  done 
by  others  to  aid,  yet  the  effective  labor  must  be  per- 
formed by  the  learner  himself.  Knowledge  cannot  be 
poured  into  a  child's  mind  like  fluid  from  one  vessel  into 
another.  The  pupil  may  do  something  by  intuition,  but 
generally  there  must  be  a  conscious  effort  on  his  part. 
He  is  not  a  passive  recipient,  but  an  active,  voluntary 
agent.  He  must  do  more  than  admit  or  welcome ;  he 
must  reach  out,  and  grasp,  and  bring  home.  It  is  the 
duty  of  the  teacher  to  bring  knowledge  within  arm's- 
length  of  the  learner;  and  he  must  break  down  its 
masses  into  portions  so  minute,  that  they  can  be  taken 
up  and  appropriated,  one  by  one ;  but  the  final  appropri- 
ating act  must  be  the  learner's.  Knowledge  is  not 
annexed  to  the  mind  like  a  foreign  substance,  but  the 
mind  assimilates  it  by  its  own  vital  powers.  It  is  far  less 
true,  that  each  one  must  earn  his  own  bread  by  the  sweat 
of  his  own  brow,  than  it  is  that  each  one  must  earn  his 
own  knowledge  by  the  labor  of  his  own  brain  ;  for, 
strictly  speaking,  nature  recognizes  no  title  to  it  by  inher- 
itance, gift  or  finding.  Development  of  mind  is  by 
growth  and  organization,  not  by  external  accretion. 
Hence  all  effective  teaching  must  have  reference  to  this 
indispensable,  consummating  act  and  effort  of  the  learner. 
The  feelings  may  undoubtedly  be  modified  by  external 
impressions,  and,  therefore,  the  mind  is  sometimes  spoken 
of  as  passive,  recipient,  adoptive ;  and  the  objects  around 
us  have  a  fitness  and  adaptation  to  awaken  mental  activ- 
ity ;  but  the  acquisition  of  positive  knowledge  is  not 
effected  by  a  process  of  involuntary  absorption.  Such  a 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  517 

notion  belongs  to  the  philosophy  by  which,  a  few  years 
ago,  a  grammatical  chart  was  published  and  pretty  exten- 
sively sold  in  some  of  the  States,  whose  peculiar  virtue  it 
was,  that,  if  hung  up  somewhere  in  a  house,  the  whole 
family  would  shortly  become  good  grammarians,  by  mys- 
teriously imbibing,  as  it  were,  certain  grammatical  efflu- 
via. The  distinction  should  bcome  broader  and  broader, 
between  the  theory  of  education  which  deals  with  mind 
as  living  spirit,  and  that  which  deals  with  it  as  a  lifeless 
substance.  Every  scholar,  in  a  school,  must  think  with 
his  own  mind,  as  every  singer,  in  a  choir,  must  sing 
with  his  own  voice. 

If  then,  in  learning,  all  wills  and  desires,  all  costs, 
labors,  efforts,  of  others,  are  dependent,  at  last,  upon  the 
will  of  the  learner,  the  first  requisite  is  the  existence  in 
his  mind  of  a  desire  to  learn.  Children,  who  spend  six 
months  in  learning  the  alphabet,  will,  on  the  play- 
ground, in  a  single  half-day  or  moonlight  evening  learn 
the  intricacies  of  a  game  or  sport,  —  where  to  stand, 
when  to  run,  what  to  say.  how  to  count,  and  what  are 
the  laws  and  the  ethics  of  the  game  ;  the  whole  requiring 
more  intellectual  effort  than  would  suffice  to  learn  half  a 
dozen  alphabets.  So  of  the  recitation  of  verses,  mingled 
with  action,  and  of  juvenile  games,  played  in  the  chimney- 
corner.  And  the  reason  is,  that  for  the  one,  there  is  de- 
sire ;  while  against  the  other,  there  is  repugnance.  The 
teacher,  in  one  case,  is  rolling  a  weight  up  hill ;  in  the 
other,  down ;  for  gravitation  is  not  more  to  the  motions 
of  a  heavy  body,  than  desire  is  to  the  efficiency  of  the  in- 
tellect. Until  a  desire  to  learn  exists  within  the  child, 
some  foreign  force  must  constantly  be  supplied  to  keep 
him  agoing;  but  from  the  moment  that  a  desire  is  ex- 
cited, he  is  self-motive,  and  goes  alone. 

Perhaps  the  best  way  of  inspiring  a  young  child  with  a 


518  THE  SECRETARY'S 

desire  of  learning  to  read,  is  to  read  to  him,  with  proper 
intervals,  some  interesting  story,  perfectly  intelligible, 
yet  as  full  of  suggestion  as  of  communication ;  for  the 
pleasure  of  discovering  is  always  greater  than  that  of 
perceiving.  Care  should  be  taken,  however,  to  leave  off 
before  the  ardor  of  curiosity  cools.  He  should  go  away 
longing,  not  loathing.  After  the  appetite  has  become 
keen,  —  and  nature  supplies  the  zest,  —  the  child  can  be 
made  to  understand  how  he  can  procure  this  enjoyment 
for  himself.  The  motive  of  affection  also  may  properly 
be  appealed  to,  that  is,  a  request  to  learn  in  order  to 
please  the  teacher ;  but  this  should  never  be  pressed  so 
far  as  to  jeopard  its  existence,  for  it  is  a  feeling  more 
precious  than  all  knowledge.  The  process  of  learning 
words  and  letters  is  toilsome,  and  progress  will  be  slow, 
unless  a  motive  is  inspired  before  instruction  is  at- 
tempted ;  and  if  three  months  are  allowed  to  teach  a 
child  his  letters,  there  is  greater  probability,  that  the 
work  will  be  done  at  the  end  of  the  time,  even  though 
ten  weeks  of  it  should  be  spent  in  gaining  his  voluntary 
co-operation  during  the  residue  of  the  time.  A  desire 
of  learning  is  better  than  all  external  opportunities, 
because  it  will  find  or  make  opportunities,  and  then 
improve  them. 

Such  are  the  difficulties  in  acquiring  the  orthography 
of  our  language,  that  it  is  said  we  have  but  two  or  three 
classes  of  uniformly  correct  spellers.  Almost  all,  except 
publishers  or  printers  and  proof-readers,  are  more  or  less 
deficient  in  this  acquisition.  While  some  other  languages, 
as  the  Italian,  French  and  German,  assign  to  individual 
letters  a  power,  which  is  scarcely  varied  whenever  they 
recur ;  the  power  given  to  the  letters,  in  the  English 
alphabet,  bears  little  resemblance  to  their  power,  when 
combined  in  words.  In  a  vast  number  of  words,  there  is 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  519 

a  uniformity  of  pronunciation  with  diversity  in  spelling, 
or  a  diversity  in  pronunciation  with  similar  spelling. 
The  same  letter  has  many  different  sounds,  while  differ- 
ent letters  have  the  same  sound,  so  that  the  learner,  after 
learning  the  sound  of  a  letter  in  one  place,  has  no  assur- 
ance of  being  right  in  giving  it  the  same  sound  in 
another.  The  letters  seem  to  change  work  with  each 
other.  Added  to  this,  many  words  have  silent  letters ; 
and  in  words,  otherwise  of  a  formation  exactly  similar, 
some  have  silent  letters,  others  none.  Were  it  not  for 
our  familiarity  with  it,  no  fact  would  be  more  striking 
than  that  which  always  presents  itself  to  the  eye,  upon 
opening  an  English  dictionary  ;  viz.,  the  double  column 
of  words  for  the  same  language,  —  one  for  a  guide  in 
spelling,  the  other,  in  pronunciation.  But  it  is  no  part 
of  this  report  to  analyze  our  language  and  expose  its 
unscientific  structure  and  anomalous  composition.  It  is 
either  very  much  too  late  or  too  early  to  reform  its  arbi- 
trary constitution.  To  adapt  the  pronunciation  to  the 
orthography  would  be  to  make  a  new  spoken  language ; 
to  adapt  its  orthography  to  its  pronunciation  would  be  to 
make  a  new  written  one. 

When  a  motive  to  learn  exists,  the  first  practical  ques- 
tion respects  the  order  in  which  letters  and  words  are  to 
be  taught ;  i.e.,  whether  letters,  taken  separately,  as  in 
the  alphabet,  shall  be  taught  before  words,  or  whether 
monosyllabic  and  familiar  words  shall  be  taught  before 
letters.  *  In  those  who  learnt,  and  have  since  taught,  in 
the  former  mode,  and  have  never  heard  of  any  other,  this 
suggestion  may  excite  surprise.  The  mode  of  teaching 
words  first,  however,  is  not  mere  theory  ;  nor  is  it  new. 
It  has  now  been  practised  for  some  time  in  the  primary 
schools  of  the  city  of  Boston,  —  in  which  there  are  four 
or  five  thousand  children,  —  and  it  is  found  to  succeed 


520  THE  SECRETARY'S 

better  than  the  old  mode.  In  other  places  in  this  coun- 
try, and  in  some  parts  of  Europe,  where  education  is  suc- 
cessfully conducted,  the  practice  of  teaching  words  first, 
and  letters  subsequently,  is  now  established.  Having  no 
personal  experience,  I  shall  venture  no  affirmation  upon 
this  point ;  but  will  only  submit  a  few  remarks  for  the 
consideration  of  those,  who  wish,  before  countenancing 
the  plan,  to  examine  the  reasons  on  which  it  is  founded. 

During  the  first  year  of  a  child's  life,  he  perceives, 
thinks,  and  acquires  something  of  a  store  of  ideas,  with- 
out any  reference  to  word  or  letters.  After  this,  the  won- 
derful faculty  of  language  begins  to  develop  itself.  Chil- 
dren then  utter  words,  —  the  names  of  objects  around 
them,  —  as  whole  sounds,  and  without  any  conception  of 
the  letters  of  which  those  words  are  composed.  In  speak- 
ing the  word  "  apple,"  for  instance,  young  children  think 
no  more  of  the  Roman  letters  which  spell  it,  than,  in  eat- 
ing the  fruit,  they  think  of  the  chemical  ingredients  — 
the  oxygen,  hydrogen,  and  carbon  —  which  compose  it. 
Hence,  presenting  them  with  the  alphabet,  is  giving  them 
what  they  never  saw,  heard,  or  thought  of  before.  It  is 
as  new  as  algebra,  and,  to  the  eye,  not  very  unlike  it.  But 
printed  names  of  known  things  are  the  signs  of  sounds 
which  their  ears  have  been  accustomed  to  hear,  and  their 
organs  of  speech  to  utter,  and  which  may  excite  agree- 
able feelings  and  associations,  by  reminding  them  of  the 
objects  named.  When  put  to  learning  the  letters  of  the 
alphabet  first,  the  child  has  no  acquaintance  with  them, 
either  with  the  eye,  the  ear,  the  tongue,  or  the  mind ; 
but  if  put  to  learning  familiar  words  first,  he  already 
knows  them  by  the  ear,  the  tongue,  and  the  mind,  while 
his  eye  only  is  unacquainted  with  them.  He  is  thus  in- 
troduced to  a  stranger  through  the  medium  of  old  ac- 
quaintances. It  can  hardly  be  doubted,  therefore,  that  a 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  521 

child  would  learn  to  name  any  twenty-six  familiar  words 
much-  sooner  than  the  twenty-six  unknown,  unheard,  and 
unthought-of  letters  of  the  alphabet. 

For  another  reason,  the  rapidity  of  acquisition  will  be 
greater,  if  words  are  taught  before  letters.  To  learn  the 
words  signifying  objects,  qualities,  actions,  with  which 
the  child  is  familiar,  turns  his  attention  to  those  objects,  if 
present,  or  revives  the  idea  of  them,  if  absent,  and  thus 
they  may  be  made  the  source^  of  great  interest  and  pleas- 
ure. We  all  know,  that  the  ease  with  which  any  thing  is 
learned,  and  the  length  of  time  it  is  remembered,  are  in 
the  direct  ratio  of  the  vividness  of  the  pleasurable  emo- 
tions which  enliven  the  acquisition. 

But  there  is  another  consideration  far  more  forcible 
than  the  preceding.  The  general  practice  is  founded  upon 
the  notion  that  the  learning  of  letters  facilitates  the  cor- 
rect combination  of  them  into  words.  Hence  children 
are  drilled  on  the  alphabet,  until  they  pronounce  the 
name  of  each  letter  at  sight.  And  yet,  when  we  combine 
letters  into  words,  we  forthwith  discard  the  sounds  which 
belonged  to  them  as  letters.  The  child  is  taught  to  sound 
the  letter  a,  until  he  becomes  so  familiar  with  it,  that  the 
sound  is  uttered  as  soon  as  the  character  is  seen.  But 
the  first  time  this  letter  is  found,  even  in  the  most  familiar 
words,  —  as  in  father,  papa,  mamma,  apple,  peach,  walnut, 
hat,  cap,  bat,  rat,  slap,  pan,  &c.,  &c., —  it  no  longer  has  the 
sound  he  was  before  taught  to  give  it,  but  one  entirely 
different.  And  so  of  the  other  vowels.  In  words,  they 
all  seem  in  masquerade.  Where  is  the  alphabetic  sound 
of  o  in  the  words  word,  dove,  plough,  enough,  other,  and 
in  innumerable  others  ?  Any  person  may  verify  this  by 
taking  any  succession  of  words,  at  random,  in  any  English 
book.  The  consequence  is,  that  whenever  the  child  meets 
his  old  friends  in  new  company,  like  rogues,  they  have 


522  THE  SECRETARY'S 

all  changed  their  names.  Thus  the  knowledge  of  the 
sounds  of  letters  in  the  alphabet  becomes  an  obstacle  to 
the  right  pronunciation  of  words ;  and  the  more  perfect 
the  knowledge,  the  greater  the  obstacle.  The  reward 
of  the  child,  for  having  thoroughly  mastered  his  letters,  is 
to  have  his  knowledge  of  them  cut  up  in  detail,  by  a  reg- 
ular series  of  contradictions,  just  as  fast  as  he  brings  it 
forward.  How  different,  for  instance,  is  the  sound  of  the 
word  is,  from  the  two  alphabetic  sounds,  i  and  s;  —  of  the 
word  we,  from  the  two  sounds,  w  and  e;  —  of  the  word  two, 
from  the  three  sounds,  t,  w,  and  o.  We  teach  an  honest 
child  to  sound  the  letters,  e,  y,  e,  singly,  until  he  utters 
them  at  sight,  and  then,  with  a  grave  face,  we  ask  him  what 
e,  y,  e,  spells  ;  and  if  he  does  not  give  the  long  sound  of  i, 
he  is  lucky  if  he  escapes  a  rebuke  or  a  frown.  Nothing 
can  more  clearly  prove  the  delightful  confidence  and 
trustfulness  of  a  child's  nature,  than  his  not  boldly  char- 
ging us,  under  such  circumstances,  with  imposition  and 
fraud. 

There  is  a  fact,  however,  which  may,  perhaps,  in  part, 
cancel  the  differences  here  pointed  out.  The  alphabet 
must  be  learned,  at  some  time,  because  there  are  various 
occasions,  besides  those  of  consulting  dictionaries  or  cyclo- 
pedias, where  the  regular  sequence  of  the  letters  must 
be  known  ;  and  possibly  it  may  be  thought,  that  it  will  be 
as  difficult  to  learn  the  letters,  after  learning  the  words,  as 
before.  But  the  fact,  which  deprives  this  consideration 
of  some  part  at  least  of  its  validity,  is,  that  it  always 
greatly  facilitates  an  acquisition  of  the  names  of  objects, 
or  persons,  to  have  been  conversant  with  their  forms  and 
appearances  beforehand.  The  learning  of  words  is  an 
introduction  to  an  acquaintance  with  the  letters  com- 
posing them.  ,;,*•'• 

To  obviate  the  inconsistency  of  teaching  children  the 


SECOND    ANNUAL   REPORT.  523 

names  of  letters,  which  are  to  be  untaught  as  soon  as 
they  are  combined  into  words,  some  persons  instruct  them 
in  the  vocal  elements  of  the  letters  only  ;  —  that  is,  to 
utter,  for  each  letter,  that  part  of  the  sound  of  a  whole 
word,  which  belongs  to  the  letters,  respectively, — as  to 
give  a  single  breathing  for  the  letter  h,  instead  of  the 
sound  of  aytch.  This  practice  is  very  limited. 

The  next  step  in  the  acquisition  of  our  language  is  the 
spelling  of  its  words.  The  arbitrary  and  capricious  for- 
mation of  words  from  letters,  is,  undoubtedly,  one  great 
cause,  that,  with  all  our  attention  to  the  subject,  we  have 
so  few  good  spellers. 

One  fact  has  been  often  remarked,  that  if  children  do 
not  learn  to  spell  pretty  correctly  before  the  age  of  ten 
or  twelve  years,  they  rarely  become  good  spellers  after- 
wards. This  fact  supplies  us  with  a  useful  hint,  in  regard 
to  making  other  studies  give  place,  a  little,  to  this,  before 
the  favorable  season  is  passed.  Another  consideration, 
derived  from  the  order  in  which  the  intellectual  powers 
are  developed,  strongly  corroborates  the  same  position. 
Language  is  an  early  developed  intellectual  power ;  — 
reason  is  one  of  the  latest.  The  spelling  of  a  tongue,  so 
anomalous  as  ours,  depends  upon  a  verbal  memory.  It  is 
not  a  subject  to  be  reasoned  about.  The  more  one  relies 
upon  his  reason  to  determine  the  true  spelling  of  English 
words,  the  oftener  he  will  mistake.  The  discovery  and 
correct  application  of  principles  and  analogies  would  gen- 
erally exclude  correctness.  I  presume  it  has  happened 
to  many  persons,  when  writing,  that  if  they  could  write 
one  of  the  less  common  words,  without  thinking  how  it 
should  be  spelt,  they  would  write  it  correctly  ;  but  if,  by 
any  chance,  the  inquiry  how  it  should  be  spelt  arose 
in  their  minds,  they  would  immediately  be  involved  in 
doubts,  which  no  reasoning  could  solve,  and  be  obliged  to 


524  THE  SECRETARY'S 

turn  to  a  dictionary.  These  facts  indicate  also,  that  spell- 
ing should  be  pursued  at  an  age  when  more  is  learned  by 
perception  and  imitation  than  by  reflection. 

But  one  thing  should  be  insisted  upon,/rom  the  begin- 
ning, and  especially  at  the  beginning.  No  word  should 
be  taught,  whose  meaning  is  not  understood.  The  teacher 
should  not  count  out  words  faster  than  ideas.  The  foun- 
dation of  the  habit  should  be  laid,  in  the  reading  of  the 
very  first  lesson,  of  regarding  words  as  the  names  of 
things  ;  as  belonging  to  something  else,  and  as  nothing  by 
themselves.  They  should  be  looked  at  as  a  medium,  and 
riot  as  an  end.  It  is  as  senseless  for  a  child  to  stop  at  the 
sign  of  the  printed  word,  in  reading,  as  it  would  be  to  stop 
at  the  sound  of  the  spoken  word,  in  conversation.  What 
child  would  not  repel  the  intercourse  of  a  person,  who 
spoke  to  him  only  words  of  which  he  knew  nothing  ?  No 
personal  charms  would  be  long  sufficient  to  compensate 
for  speaking  to  a  child  in  an  unknown  tongue.  How  is 
it  possible,  then,  that  an  active-minded  child  should  not 
disdain  the  dreary  pages  of  a  book  which  awaken  no 
thought  or  emotion  within  him  ;  —  which  are  neither 
beauty  to  the  eye,  nor  music  to  the  ear,  nor  sense  to  the 
uaderstanding  ?  As  reading  is  usually  taught,  the  child 
does  not  come  into  communication  with  his  lesson  by 
any  one  of  all  his  faculties.  When  a  child  looks  into  a 
mirror,  or  at  a  picture  where  the  perspective  is  strikingly 
marked,  he  will  reach  around  to  look  behind  the  mirror, 
or  behind  the  picture,  in  hope  of  finding  the  objects  in  the 
place  where  they  appear  to  be.  He  cares  nothing  for 
the  mirror,  nor  for  the  canvas  ;  —  his  mind  is  with  the 
things  presented  to  his  senses.  In  reading,  the  page 
should  be  only  as  the  mirror,  or  picture,  through  which 
objects  are  beheld.  Thus  there  would  be  far  more  delight 
in  looking  at  the  former,  than  at  the  latter ;  because 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  525 

words  can  present  more  circumstances  of  variety,  beauty, 
life,  amplitude,  than  any  reflecting  surface  or  dead  pic- 
ture. Should  we  not  revolt  at  the  tyranny  of  being 
obliged  to  pore,  day  after  day,  upon  the  outer  darkness 
of  a  Chinese  manuscript  ?  But  if  the  words  are  not 
understood,  the  more  regular  formation  of  the  Chinese 
characters  gives  them  a  decided  advantage  over  our  own 
letters.  Give  a  child  two  glasses,  precisely  similar  in 
every  respect,  except  that  one  shall  be  opaque,  the  other 
a  magnifier.  Through  the  former  nothing  can  be  teen, 
and  it  therefore  degenerates  into  a  bawble  ;  but  the  latter 
seems  to  create  a  thousand  new  and  brilliant  objects,  and 
hence  he  is  enamoured  of  its  quality.  There  is  precisely 
the  same  difference  in  the  presentation  of  words.  Yet 
we  punish  children  because  they  do  not  master  words 
without  any  regard  to  their  being  understood. 

But  how  can  this  plan  be  executed  ?  In  this  way. 
During  the  first  year  of  a  child's  life,  before  the  faculty 
of  speech  is  developed,  —  before  he  has  ever  uttered  a 
word,  —  he  has  obtained  a  considerable  stock  of  ideas  re- 
specting objects,  qualities,  and  motions.  During  the  next 
year  or  two,  and  before  it  is  usual  to  teach  letters,  he  is 
employed  through  every  waking  hour,  both  in  learning 
the  words  expressive  of  known  phenomena,  and  also  in 
acquiring  a  knowledge  of  new  things  and  events ;  so  that 
before  the  age  of  four,  or  even  three  years,  the  items  of 
his  inventory  of  elementary  knowledge  swell  to  thou- 
sands. In  his  memory  are  not  merely  playthings,  but 
catalogues  of  furniture,  food,  dress,  insects,  animals,  vehi- 
cles, objects  in  natural  scenery,  divisions  of  time,  and  so 
forth,  with  various  motions  and  appearances  belonging  to 
them  all.  Numbers,  sounds,  events,  feelings,  also  come 
into  the  list.  This  is  a  stock  not  readily  exhausted.  By 
first  teaching  the  names  or  phrases  exoressive  of  these, 


526  THE  SECRETARY'S 

the  substance  is  always  present  to  his  mind,  and  the 
words  are  mere  signs  or  incidents  ;  and  a  habit  is  formed 
of  always  keeping  the  mind,  in  after-life,  intent  upon 
tilings  and  their  relations,  —  a  habit  of  inestimable  value, 
and  the  only  foundation  of  intellectual  greatness. 

I  am  not  unaware  of  what  is  said  by  Locke,  Burke, 
and  others,  of  our  using  words  and  phrases,  without  at 
all  summoning  into  the  mind  the  particular  ideas  signi- 
fied. This  is  undoubtedly  true,  to  some  extent,  but  it 
belongs  to  a  later  period  in  life.  It  is  only  after  having 
used  words,  times  almost  innumerable,  with  an  accom- 
panying conception  of  the  things  signified,  that  we,  at 
last,  transfer  to  the  words  a  general  conception  of  what 
originally  belonged  to  the  ideas.  If  comparisons  may  be 
allowed  to  illustrate  a  point  somewhat  obscure,  the  words 
have  been  so  long  used  as  a  vehicle  of  the  things,  that, 
at  last,  when  we  see  the  vehicle,  we  presume  the  con- 
tents ;  —  or,  as  in  the  case  of  those  persons  who  are  ac- 
customed to  count  large  masses  of  specie,  over  and  over 
again,  in  branded  boxes  or  labelled  bags ;  having  opened 
them  many  times,  and  found  them  to  contain  the  quantity 
stamped,  they  afterwards  count  by  the  mark.  So  it  is 
with  words  in  relation  to  ideas.  But,  if  the  ideas  have 
never  been  compared  with  the  words,  that  is,  if  the  spe- 
cie has  never  been  counted  and  compared  with  the  stamp, 
then  the  latter  has  no  signification.  Hence  the  compari- 
sons are  the  very  first  steps  in  the  operation,  and  it  is 
only  by  virtue  of  having  made  them  that  we  can  after- 
wards venture  to  facilitate  the  operation  by  relying  upon 
the  index.  And  an  early  habit  of  associating  every  word 
with  an  idea  is  rendered  so  much  the  more  necessary, 
because  words  are  only  arbitrary  and  artificial  signs  of 
thoughts  and  feelings.  Were  they  natural  signs,  then 
the  whole  stress  of  observation  and  experience  through 


SECOND    ANNUAL   REPORT.  527 

life  would  serve  to  connect  and  bind  together,  more  and 
more  closely,  the  signs  and  the  things  signified.  There 
would  be  a  perpetual  and  strong  tendency  to  coalescence 
between  them.  But  as  the  relation  is  wholly  conven- 
tional, if  the  habit  is  not  formed  of  uniting  the  sound  to 
the  sense,  an  opposite  habit  of  separating  them  is  neces- 
sarily established.  For  an  obvious  reason,  therefore,  a 
correct  habit  is  more  easily  formed  at  the  commencement 
than  ever  afterwards. 

Were  this  process  observed,  it  would  reduce  almost  to 
nothing  two  classes  of  men  amongst  us  ;  one  of  whom 
are  greatly  impaired  in  their  usefulness,  because,  though 
they  think  much,  they  can  never  speak ;  the  other  abso- 
lutely noxious,  because,  though  speaking  much,  they 
never  think.  The  latter  class,  indeed,  seem  to  be  re- 
taliating upon  that  early  period  of  their  life,  when  they 
thought  without  speaking,  by  speaking  without  thinking 
during  the  residue. 

When  it  is  said,  however,  that  a  child  should  not  be 
put  to  reading  what  he  cannot  understand,  it  is  to  be 
taken  with  that  reasonable  qualification  which  springs 
from  the  nature  of  the  case,  and  which  every  candid  mind 
will  supply.  There  are  certain  words  in  every-day  use, 
of  whose  comprehension  all  finite  intellect  must  fall 
almost  infinitely  short.  Such  are  the  words  immensity, 
infinity,  absolute  perfection,  and  so  forth.  These  are 
used,  as  mathematicians  use  algebraic  signs,  to  express 
unknown  quantities.  There  are  other  words  also,  of 
whose  meaning  no  man  has  any  thing  more  than  a  proxi- 
mate apprehension.  But  a  child  of  three  years  may  per- 
fectly understand  what  is  meant,  if  he  reads  the  word 
newspaper,  and  he  may  know  many  things  respecting  it, 
such  as  title,  outside,  inside,  columns,  margin,  top,  bottom, 
size,  length,  breadth,  fy-c.,  —  and  these  constitute  a  palpa- 


528  THE  SECRETARY'S 

ble  idea  of  a  newspaper,  —  without  knowing  that  it  is  a 
microcosm,  and  that,  for  its  production,  there  may  have 
been  required  an  effort  of  all  the  human  faculties,  work- 
ing on  the  three  kingdoms,  mineral,  vegetable,  and  ani- 
mal. So  a  child  may  have  a  clear  conception  of  the 
meaning  of  such  words  as  home,  parent,  affection,  guilt, 
conscience,  without  penetrating  one  line's  length  into 
their  unfathomable  depth  of  meaning.  What  is  insisted 
upon  is,  that  the  child  should  have  a  clear  conception  of 
what  is  meant,  that  such  conception  should  be  correct  as 
far  as  it  goes,  and  that  it  should  be  as  extensive  as  his 
ability  will  allow. 

Were  a  child  skilfully  taught,  with  only  a  due  alterna- 
tion between  physical  and  mental  exercise,  and  with  an 
inspection  of  as  many  of  the  objects  of  nature  and  art  as 
common  opportunity  would  allow,  it  is  believed  that  he 
might  acquire  a  knowledge  of  the  spelling  and  of  the 
primary  meanings  of  substantially  all  the  unscientific  and 
untechnical  words,  in  ordinary  use,  before  passing  the 
age  when  orthography  becomes  more  difficult  of  attain- 
ment. If,  however,  owing  to  early  neglect  in  education, 
or  to  mental  inefficiency,  the  most  favorable  season  for 
learning  to  spell  is  passing  away,  and  it  is  deemed  advi- 
sable to  hasten  this  acquisition  at  the  expense  of  other 
studies,  or  (if  any  one  so  prefers)  even  of  the  meaning 
of  words,  then  it  is  believed  that  the  words  may  be  so 
classified  in  the  spelling-book,  as  greatly  to  facilitate 
the  labor.  For  this  purpose,  let  words  be  arranged  to- 
gether, whose  difficult  syllables  agree  in  formation ;  as, 
for  instance,  syllable,  sycophant,  sylvan,  symbol,  syna- 
gogue, syntax,  in  which  y  has  the  sound  of  i,  short ;  or 
in  words  where  ch  has  the  sound  of  k,  as  in  machination, 
chronological,  bacchanalian ;  or  in  words  where  qu  has 
the  sound  of  k,  as  in  mosque,  opaque,  liquor ;  or  where 


SECONP    ANNUAL    REPORT.  529 

ei  has  the  sound  of  a,  as  in  eight,  weight,  inveigh,  &c. 
This  list  might  be  almost  indefinitely  extended ;  the  above 
are  given  as  specimens  merely.  The  great  advantage  of 
this  system  is,  that  when  the  true  formation  of  the  diffi- 
cult syllable  is  known  for  one  word,  it  is  known  for  the 
whole  table,  and  frequent  repetitions  of  the  table  will  fix 
the  order  of  the  letters  in  the  memory,  which,  by  the  law 
of  association,  will  afterwards  involuntarily  recur,  like 
products  in  the  multiplication-table,  or  successive  notes 
in  a  well-learned  piece  of  music.  Habit,  founded  on  this 
association,  will  command  the  successive  letters  in  writ- 
ing, as  unconsciously  as  it  does  successive  steps  in  walk- 
ing. An  excellent  spelling-book  has  lately  been  published 
in  this  city,  in  which  words  are  arranged  with  reference 
to  their  intelligibleness  to  children ;  and  Webster  and 
Fowle  have  made  close  approximation,  certainly,  to  ar- 
rangements of  words,  in  conformity  with  the  law  of  men- 
tal association,  above  referred  to.  It  is  believed  that  a 
spelling-book  may  be  prepared  which  shall  combine  the 
first,  greatest,  and  most  indispensable  of  all  requisites, 
that  of  addressing  the  innate  and  universal  love  of  learn- 
ing new  things,  —  with  such  a  philosophical  adaptation  to 
the  successive  periods  of  mental  development,  as  shall,  as 
a  general  rule,  present  what  is  to  be  learned  during  the 
epoch  in  which  it  can  be  most  easily  and  pleas urably 
acquired. 

Would  my  limits  permit,  I  should  be  glad  to  enter  into 
some  detail  with  regard  to  the  modes,  now  practised  in 
our  schools,  of  teaching  orthography.  I  will,  however, 
only  observe,  that  spelling,  by  writing  (when  the  pupil 
can  write),  appears  to  have  great  advantages  over  spell- 
ing orally.  In  the  business  of  Life,  we  have  no  occasion 
to  spell  orally,  and  thousands  of  cases  have  made  it  cer- 
tain, that  the  same  person  may  be  a  good  speller  with  the 

VOL,  I.  84 


530  THE  SECRETARY'S 

lips,  who  is  an  indifferent  one  with  the  pen.  Nor  is  this 
any  more  strange,  than  that  a  man  should  not  be  able  to 
do  dexterously  with  his  left  hand  what  he  has  always 
been  accustomed  to  do  with  his  right. 

It  is  obvious,  that  even  in  regard  to  orthography,  the 
book-maker  is  the  great  auxiliary  of  the  teacher.  It 
is  not  less  emphatically  true  of  reading,  that  the  book- 
maker and  the  teacher  are  performing  different  parts 
of  one  work.  In  this  division  of  labor,  the  book-maker's 
part  is  first  to  be  performed,  and  it  is  impossible  for  the 
best  teacher  wholly  to  make  amends  for  what  is  untoward 
or  preposterous  on  the  author's  part ;  because  clumsy 
and  defective  implements  will  baffle  the  ingenuity  of  the 
most  perfect  workman.  While  measures  are  in  progress, 
therefore,  to  increase  the  competency  of  teachers,  through 
the  medium  of  Normal  Schools,  the  principles  on  which 
school-books  should  be  prepared  should  receive  careful 
attention,  that  good  agents  may  have  good  instruments. 
I  avail  myself  of  this  occasion  to  make  a  few  suggestions 
upon  the  subject  of  reading-books. 

Reading  is  divisible  into  two  parts.  It  consists  of  the 
mechanical  and  the  mental.  The  mechanical  part  is 
the  utterance  of  the  articulate  sounds  of  a  language,  on 
inspecting  its  written  or  printed  signs.  It  is  called 
mechanical,  because  the  operation  closely  resembles  that 
of  a  machine,  which  may  receive  the  best  of  materials, 
and  run  through  a  thousand  parcels  of  them  every  year ; 
—  the  machine  itself  remaining  just  as  bare  and  naked 
at  the  end  of  the  year  as  it  was  at  the  beginning.  On 
the  other  hand,  one  portion  of  the  mental  part  of  reading 
consists  in  a  reproduction  in  the  mind  of  the  reader  of 
whatever  was  in  the  mind  of  the  author  ;  so  that  whether 
the  author  describes  atoms  or  worlds,  narrates  the  history 
of  individuals  or  nations,  kindles  into  sublimity,  or  melts 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  531 

in  pathos,  —  whatever  was  in  the  author's  mind  starts 
into  sudden  existence  in  the  reader's  mind,  as  nearly 
as  their  different  mental  constitutions  will  allow.  An 
example  of  the  purely  mechanical  part  is  exhibited  in 
reading  a  foreign  language,  no  word  of  which  is  under- 
stood ;  as  in  the  case  of  Milton's  daughters,  who  read  the 
dead  languages  to  their  blind  father ;  —  they,  with  eyes, 
seeing  nothing  but  black  marks  upon  white  paper,  —  he, 
without  eyes,  surveying  material  and  spiritual  worlds,  — 
at  once  charmed  by  their  beauties,  and  instructed  by 
their  wisdom. 

With  the  mental  part,  then,  reading  becomes  the 
noblest  instrument  of  wisdom ;  without  it,  it  is  the  most 
despicable  part  of  folly  and  worthlessness.  Beforehand, 
it  would  seem  quite  as  incredible,  that  any  person  should 
compel  children  to  go  through  with  the  barren  forms 
of  reading,  without  ideas,  as  to  make  them  perform 
all  the  motions  of  eating,  without  food.  The  body  would 
not  dwindle  under  the  latter  more  certainly  than  the 
mind  under  the  former.  The  inevitable  consequences  are, 
that  all  the  delight  of  acquisition  is  foregone  ;  the  reward 
which  nature  bestows  upon  the  activity  of  the  faculties 
is  forfeited,  —  a  reward  which  is  richer  than  all  prizes, 
and  more  efficient  than  all  chastisement ;  —  and  an  invet- 
erate habit  is  formed  of  dissociating  thought  and  lan- 
guage. "  Understandest  thou  what  thou  readest," 
therefore,  is  a  question  quite  as  apposite  when  put  by  a 
teacher  to  a  child  in  his  horn-book,  as  when  asked  by  an 
Apostle  of  the  ambassador  of  a  Queen. 

Entertaining  views  of  the  importance  of  this  subject, 
of  which  the  above  is  only  the  feeblest  expression,  I  have 
devoted  especial  pains  to  learn,  with  some  degree  of 
numerical  accuracy,  how  far  the  reading,  in  our  schools, 
is  an  exercise  of  the  mind  in  thinking  and  feeling,  and 


532  THE  SECRETARY'S 

how  far  it  is  a  barren  action  of  the  organs  of  speech  upon 
the  atmosphere.  My  information  is  derived,  principally, 
from  the  written  statements  of  the  school  committees 
of  the  respective  towns,  —  gentlemen  who  are  certainly 
exempt  from  all  temptation  to  disparage  the  schools  they 
superintend.  The  result  is,  that  more  than  eleven- 
twelfths  of  all  the  children  in  the  reading-classes,  in  our 
schools,  do  not  understand  the  meaning  of  the  words  they 
read ;  that  they  do  not  master  the  sense  of  the  reading- 
lessons,  and  that  the  ideas  and  feelings  intended  by  the 
author  to  be  conveyed  to,  and  excited  in,  the  reader's 
mind,  still  rest  in  the  author's  intention,  never  having  yet 
reached  the  place  of  their  destination.  And  by  this  it 
is  not  meant  that  the  scholars  do  not  obtain  such  a  full 
comprehension  of  the  subject  of  the  reading-lessons,  in 
its  various  relations  and  bearings,  as  a  scientific  or  erudite 
reader  would  do,  but  that  they  do  not  acquire  a  reason- 
able and  practicable  understanding  of  them.  It  would 
hardly  seem  that  the  combined  efforts  of  all  persons 
engaged  could  have  accomplished  more  in  defeating  the 
true  objects  of  reading. 

How  the  cause  of  this  deficiency  is  to  be  apportioned 
among  the  legal  supervisors  of  the  schools,  parents, 
teachers  or  authors  of  school-books,  it  is  impossible  to 
say ;  but  surely  it  is  an  evil,  gratuitous,  widely  prevalent, 
and  threatening  the  most  alarming  consequences.  But 
it  is  not  a  remediless  one.  There  is  intelligence  enough 
in  this  community  to  search  out  the  cause,  and  wisdom 
enough  to  find  and  apply  a  remedy. 

It  has  been  already  stated,  that  we  may  acquire  a 
knowledge  of  a  very  few  things,  —  such  as  are  placed 
within  the  range  of  our  senses,  —  without  the  use  of 
language ;  but  that  language  is  the  only  medium  by 
which  any  thing,  prior  to  our  own  memory  and  expe- 


SECOND    ANNUAL   REPORT.  533 

rience,  or  beyond  our  own  vision,  can  be  made  known  to 
us.  Although,  therefore,  the  words  which  our  language 
is  said  to  contain,  seem  to  be  many  ;  yet  when  we  think 
of  all  the  relations  of  human  life,  —  domestic,  business, 
and  social ;  —  of  the  countless  objects  in  the  different 
kingdoms  of  nature,  with  their  connections  and  depend- 
encies ;  —  of  the  sciences  which  have  been  founded  upon 
them,  and  of  the  arts  to  which  they  have  been  made 
subservient ;  —  of  all,  in  fine,  external  to  ourselves, 
within  the  circle  of  time  and  beneath  the  arch  of  heaven ; 
and  of  our  own  conscious  hopes,  fears,  desires,  to  which 
that  arch  is  no  boundary  ;  we  shall  see,  at  once,  that  the 
words  of  our  language,  numerous  as  they  are,  are  only 
as  one  to  infinity,  compared  with  the  number  of  the 
objects  to  which  they  are  daily  applied.  And  yet  these 
words  are  sufficient  not  only  to  present  us  with  an  image 
and  a  record  of  past  and  present  existences,  but  they  are 
capable  of  outrunning  the  course  of  time,  and  describing 
the  possibilities  of  the  future,  and  of  transcending  the 
limits  of  reality,  and  portraying  the  fancy-peopled  worlds 
created  by  the  imagination.  And,  what  is  still  more 
wonderful  is,  that,  with  the  aid  of  these  comparatively 
few  words,  we  can  designate  and  touch,  as  it  were  with 
the  finger,  any  one  fact  or  event  in  this  universe  of  facts 
and  events,  or  parcel  out  any  groups  of  them,  from  tens 
to  tens  of  myriads ;  or  we  can  note  any  period  on  the 
dial-plate  of  by-gone  centuries,  just  as  easily  as  we  refer 
to  the  hours  of  the  passing  day.  Now  to  accomplish  this, 
it  is  obvious  that  language  must  be  susceptible  of  com- 
binations indefinitely  numerous ;  that  most  of  its  single 
words  must  assume  different  meanings,  in  different  collo- 
cations, and  that  phrases,  capable  of  expressing  any  one 
or  any  millions  of  these  facts,  vicissitudes,  relations,  must 
be  absolutely  inexhaustible.  Then,  again,  language  has 


534  THE  SECRETARY'S 

various,  strongly  marked  forms,  as  colloquial,  philo- 
sophical, poetical,  devotional  ;  and  in  each  of  these 
divisions,  whatever  subject  we  wish  to  separate  from  the 
rest,  language  can  carve  it  out,  and  display  it  distinctly 
and  by  itself,  for  our  examination.  It  handles  the  most 
abstruse  relations  and  affinities,  and  traces  the  most  sub- 
tile analogies  to  their  vanishing-point;  or,  with  equal 
ease,  it  condenses  the  most  universal  principles  into  brief 
sentences,  or,  if  we  please,  into  single  words.  Hence,  in 
using  it,  to  express  any  greater  or  smaller  part  of  what 
is  perceived  by  the  senses,  by  intellect,  or  by  genius,  the 
two  conditions  are,  that  we  must  discern,  mentally,  what 
individual  object  or  quality,  or  what  combinations  of 
objects  and  qualities,  we  wish  to  specify  ;  and  then  we 
must  select  the  words  and  form  the  phrases,  —  or  volumes, 
if  need  be,  —  which  will  depict  or  designate  by  name 
the  individual  objects  we  mean,  or  will  draw  a  line  round 
the  combination  of  objects  we  wish  to  exhibit  and  de- 
scribe. All  true  use  of  language,  therefore,  necessarily 
involves  a  mental  act  of  adjustment,  measure,  precision, 
pertinency  ;  otherwise  it  cannot  fix  the  extent  or  gauge 
the  depth  of  any  subject.  Language  is  to  be  selected 
and  applied  to  the  subject-matter,  whether  that  subject- 
matter  be  business,  history,  art  or  consciousness,  just  as 
a  surveyor  applies  his  chain  to  the  measurement  of  areas, 
or  as  an  artist  selects  his  colors  to  portray  the  original. 
But  what  must  be  the  result,  if  the  surveyor  knows 
nothing  of  the  length  of  the  chain  he  uses,  and  if  the 
artist  selects  his  colors  by  chance,  and  knows  not  to  what 
parts  he  applies  them? 

Hence,  the  acquisition  of  language  consists  far  less  in 
mastering  words  as  individuals,  than  it  does  in  adjusting 
their  applications  to  things,  in  sentences  and  phrases.  And 
one  great  object — there  are  others  not  less  important  — 


SECOND  ANNUAL  REPORT.  535 

of  teaching  the  children  in  our  schools  to  read,  is,  that 
they  may  there  commence  this  habit  of  adjustment,  of 
specifying  and  delineating  with  precision,  whatever  is 
within  the  range  of  their  knowledge  and  experience. 
All  attempts,  therefore,  to  teach  language  to  children, 
are  vain,  which  have  not  this  constant  reference  to  the 
subject-matter  intended  to  be  specified  and  described. 
If  the  thing  signified  is  not  present  to  the  mind,  it  is 
impossible  that  the  language  should  be  a  measure,  for, 
by  the  supposition,  there  is  nothing  to  be  measured.  It 
becomes  a  mere  hollow  sound ;  and  with  this  disadvan- 
tage, that,  from  the  parade  which  is  made  in  administer- 
ing the  nothingness,  the  child  is  led  to  believe  he  has 
received  something.  The  uselessness  of  such  a  process 
would  seem  to  be  enough,  without  the  falsity.  The  fact, 
that  many  children  may  not  be  able  to  make  great 
progress  in  this  adjustment  of  words  to  things,  so  far 
from  being  any  reply  to  this  view  of  the  subject,  only 
renders  it  so  much  the  more  important  that  what  is  done 
should  be  done  rightly. 

Notwithstanding  the  immense  treasures  of  knowledge 
accumulated  in  the  past  six  thousand  years,  and  the  im- 
mense difference  between  the  learned  men  of  our  own 
and  of  ancient  times,  yet  no  one  denies  that  children  are 
now  brought  into  the  world  in  the  same  state  of  igno- 
rance as  they  were  before  the  flood.  When  born,  only  a 
single  instinct  is  developed,  —  that  of  appetite  for  food. 
Weeks  pass,  before  the  quickest  of  all  the  senses  —  the 
sight  —  takes  note  of  any  object.  At  about  the  age  of  a 
year,  the  faculty  of  language  dimly  appears.  One  after 
another,  other  powers  bud  forth ;  but  it  seems  to  be  the 
opinion  of  the  best  metaphysicians,  that  the  highest  facul- 
ties of  the  intellect  —  those  which,  in  their  full  develop- 
ment and  energy,  make  the  lawgivers  of  the  race,  and 


5-J6  THE  SECRETARY'S 

the  founders  of  moral  dynasties  —  hardly  dawn  before 
the  age  of  twelve  or  fourteen  years.  And  yet,  in  many 
of  the  reading-books  now  in  use  in  the  schools,  the  most 
pithy  sayings  of  learned  men ;  the  aphorisms  in  which 
moralists  have  deposited  a  life  of  observation  and  expe- 
rience ;  the  maxims  of  philosophers,  embodying  the  high- 
est forms  of  intellectual  truth,  are  set  down  as  First  Les- 
sons for  children; — as  though,  because  a  child  was  born 
after  Bacon  and  Franklin,  he  could  understand  them  of 
course.  While  a  child  is  still  engrossed  with  visible  and 
palpable  objects,  while  his  juvenile  playthings  are  yet  a 
mystery  to  him,  he  is  presented  with  some  abstraction  or 
generalization,  just  discovered,  after  the  profoundest  study 
of  men  and  things,  by  some  master  intellect.  But  it  mat- 
ters not  to  children,  how  much  knowledge  or  wisdom 
there  may  be  in  the  world,  on  subjects  foreign  to  them- 
selves, until  they  have  acquired  strength  of  mind  suffi- 
cient to  receive  and  appropriate  them.  The  only  interest 
which  a  child  has  in  the  attainments  of  the  age  in  which 
he  is  born,  is,  that  they  may  be  kept  from  him  until  ho 
lias  been  prepared  to  receive  them.  Erudite  and  scientific 
men,  for  their  own  convenience,  have  formed  summaries, 
digests,  abstracts,  of  their  knowledge,  each  sentence  of 
which  contains  a  thousand  elements  of  truth,  that  had 
been  mastered  in  detail ;  and,  on  inspection  of  these  ab- 
breviated forms,  they  are  reminded  of,  not  taught,  the 
individual  truths  they  contain.  Yet  these  are  given  to 
children,  as  though  they  would  call  up  in  their  minds  the 
same  ideas  which  they  suggest  to  their  authors.  But 
while  children  are  subjected  to  the  law  of  their  Creator, 
that  of  being  born  in  ignorance,  their  growth  is  the  desid- 
eratum, which  Education  should  supply,  and  their  intel- 
lect cannot  thrive  upon  what  it  does  not  understand  ;  — 
nay,  more,  the  intellect  carries  as  a  burden  whatever  it 


SECOND    ANNUAL    EEPORT.  537 

does  not  assimilate  as  nourishment.  An  indispensable 
quality  of  a  school-book,  then,  is  its  adjustment  to  the 
power  of  the  learner.  No  matter  how  far,  or  how  little, 
advanced  from  the  starting-point  of  ignorance  a  child 
may  be,  the  teacher  and  the  book  must  go  to  him.  And 
this  is  only  saying,  that  he  cannot  proceed  upon  his  jour- 
ney from  a  point  not  yet  reached,  but  must  first  go 
through  the  intermediate  stages.  A  child  must  know  in- 
dividual objects  of  a  species,  before  he  can  understand  a 
name  descriptive  of  the  species  itself.  He  must  know 
particulars,  before  he  can  understand  the  relations  of 
analogy  or  contrast  between  them ;  he  must  be  accus- 
tomed to  ideas  of  visible  and  tangible  extension,  before  it 
is  of  any  nse  to  tell  him  of  the  height  of  the  Alps  or  the 
length  of  the  Amazon ;  he  must  have  definite  notions  of 
weight,  before  he  can  understand  the  force  of  gravitating 
planets  ;  he  must  be  acquainted  with  phenomena,  before 
he  can  be  instructed  in  the  laws  which  harmonize  their 
conflicting  appearances ;  and  he  must  know  something 
of  the  relations  of  men,  before  he  is  qualified  to  infer  the 
duties  that  spring  from  them. 

Nor  should  the  first  lessons  be  simple  and  elementary, 
in  regard  to  the  subject  only ;  but  the  language  of  the 
earliest  ones  should  be  literal.  All  figurative  or  meta- 
phorical expression  is  based  upon  the  literal,  and  can 
have  no  intelligible  existence  without  it.  After  a  clear 
apprehension  of  the  literal  meaning  of  words,  there  is  a 
charm  in  their  figurative  applications ;  because  a  com- 
parison is  silently  made  between  the  figurative  and  the 
literal  meanings,  and  the  resemblance  perceived  awakens 
a  delightful  emotion.  And  this  pleasure  is  proportioned 
to  the  distinctness  of  the  related  ideas.  But  how  can  a 
child  understand  those  figures  of  speech,  where  a  part  is 
put  for  the  whole,  or  the  whole  for  a  part,  when  he  knows 


538  THE  SECRETARY'S 

nothing  either  of  whole  or  part; — where  sensible  objects 
are  put  for  intelligible,  or  animate  things  for  inanimate, 
when  he  is  wholly  ignorant  of  the  subjects  likened  or 
contrasted  ?  How  can  there  be  any  such  thing  as  tautol- 
ogy to  a  child,  who  is  unacquainted  with  what  went  be- 
fore ;  or  how  can  he  perceive  antithesis  if  both  extremes 
are  invisible  ?  In  writings,  beautiful  from  the  richness 
of  their  suggestion,  the  tacit  reference  to  collateral  ideas 
is  wholly  lost ;  and  yet  it  is  the  highest  proof  of  a  master, 
to  interweave  ideas  with  which  pleasurable  emotions  have 
become  associated.  Hence,  a  child,  put  into  reading-les- 
sons which  are  beyond  his  ability,  not  only  reads  with  a 
dormant  understanding,  but  all  the  faculties,  productive 
of  taste,  refinement,  elegance,  beauty,  are  torpid  also. 
The  faculties  being  unemployed,  the  reading,  which  other- 
wise would  have  been  a  pleasure,  becomes  irksome  and 
repulsive.  There  is  another  pernicious  consequence,  in- 
separable from  the  practice  of  depositing,  in  the  memory 
of  children,  those  general  and  synoptical  views  which 
they  do  not  understand.  It  leads  to  an  opposite  extreme 
in  instruction  ;  for  when  children,  whose  memory  only 
has  been  cultivated,  are  really  to  be  taught  any  subject 
with  thoroughness,  and  for  practical  application,  it  then 
becomes  necessary  to  simplify  and  degrade  it  to  the  level 
of  their  feeble  apprehension.  But  why  cannot  the  facul- 
ties be  strengthened  by  exercise,  so  that,  in  process  of 
time,  they  can  master  more  difficult  subjects,  as  well  as  to 
degrade  subjects  to  the  level  of  weak  faculties  ? 

In  communicating  the  elements  of  knowledge  to  chil- 
dren, there  is,  at  first,  but  little  danger  of  being  too 
minute  and  particular.  Expansion,  explanation,  illustra- 
tion, circumlocution,  —  all  are  necessary.  But,  as  the 
child  advances,  less  diffuseness  is  requisite.  The  prolix 
becomes  concise.  Different  and  more  comprehensive 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  539 

words  are  used,  or  the  same  in  an  enlarged  signification. 
What  was  pulverized  and  examined  in  atoms  is  now  col- 
lected and  handled  in  masses.  Care,  however,  is  to  be 
taken  at  every  step,  in  the  first  place,  that  what  is  pre- 
sented to  the  learner  should  demand  a  conscious  effort  on 
his  part,  for,  without  such  an  effort,  there  will  be  no  in- 
crease of  strength ;  and,  in  the  next  place,  that  what  is 
presented  should  be  attainable  by  an  effort,  for,  without 
success,  discouragement  and  despair  will  ensue.  School- 
books,  however,  are  made  for  classes,  and  not  for  indi- 
vidual minds,  and  hence  the  best  books  will  be  more  pre- 
cisely adapted  to  some  minds  than  to  others.  This  differ- 
ence it  is  the  duty  of  the  teacher  to  equalize,  by  giving 
more  copious  explanations  to  the  dull  and  unintelligent, 
and  by  tasking  the  strong  and  apprehensive  with  more 
difficult  questions  connected  with  the  text.  Every  sen- 
tence will  have  related  ideas  of  cause  and  effect,  of  what 
is  antecedent,  consequent  or  collateral,  which  may  be  ex- 
plored to  the  precise  extent  indicated  by  different  abili- 
ties. The  old  Balearic  islanders  of  the  Mediterranean, 
famed  among  the  ancients  for  being  the  best  bowmen  and 
slingsmen  in  the  then  known  world,  had  in  this  respect 
a  true  idea  of  Education.  They  placed  the  food  of  their 
children  upon  the  branches  of  the  trees,  at  different 
heights  from  the  ground,  according  to  age  and  profi- 
ciency, and  when  the  children  had  dislodged  it,  by  bow 
or  sling,  they  had  their  meals,  but  not  before. 

Tested  by  this  criterion,  are  not  many  of  the  reading- 
books  in  our  schools  too  elevated  for  the  scholars  ?  It 
seems  generally  to  have  been  the  object  of  the  compilers 
of  these  books  to  cull  the  most  profound  and  brilliant 
passages,  contained  in  a  language,  in  which  the  highest 
efforts  of  learning,  talent,  and  genius  have  been  em- 
balmed. Had  there  been  a  rivalry,  like  that  at  the 


540  THE  SECRETARY'S 

ancient  Olympic  games,  where  emulous  nations,  instead 
of  individuals,  had  entered  the  classic  lists,  as  competitors 
for  renown,  and  our  fame  as  a  people  had  been  staked 
upon  our  eloquent,  school-book  miscellanies,  we  should 
have  questioned  the  integrity  of  the  umpire,  had  we  not 
won  the  prize.  Certainly  from  no  ancient,  probably  from 
no  other  modern  language,  could  such  a  selection  of  lite- 
rary excellences  be  made,  as  some  of  them  exhibit, — 
demonstrative  arguments  on  the  most  abstruse  and  re- 
condite subjects,  tasking  the  acuteness  of  practised  logi- 
cians, and  appreciable  only  by  them  ;  —  brilliant  passages 
of  parliamentary  debates,  whose  force  would  be  irresisti- 
ble, provided  only  that  one  were  familiar  with  all  con- 
temporary institutions  and  events  ; — scenes  from  dramas, 
beautiful  if  understood,  but  unintelligible  without  an 
acquaintance  with  heathen  mythology ;  —  wit,  poetry, 
eloquence,  whose  shafts,  to  the  vision  of  educated  minds, 
are  quick  and  refulgent  as  lightning,  but  giving  out  to 
the  ignorant  only  an  empty  rumbling  of  words  ;  —  every 
thing,  in  fine,  may  be  found  in  their  pages,  which  can 
make  them,  at  once,  worthy  the  highest  admiration  of  the 
learned,  and  wholly  unintelligible  to  children.  If  I  may 
recur  to  the  illustration  of  the  Balearic  islanders,  given 
above ;  the  prize  of  the  young  slingers  and  archers  is  in- 
valuable, if  it  can  be  obtained ;  but  it  is  placed  so  high  as 
to  be  wholly  invisible.  Children  can  advance  from  the 
proposition,  that  one  and  one  make  two,  up  to  the  meas- 
urement of  planetary  distances,  but  an  immense  number 
of  steps  must  be  taken  in  traversing  the  intermediate 
spaces.  And  it  is  only  by  a  similar  gradation  and  pro- 
gressiveness,  that  a  child  can  advance  from  understanding 
such  nursery  talk  as  "the  ball  rolls,"  "the  dog  barks," 
"the  horse  trots,"  until  his  mind  acquires  such  compass 
and  velocity  of  movement,  that  when  he  reads  the  brief 


SECOND    ANNUAL   REPORT.  541 

declaration  of  the  Psalmist,  "  0  Lord,  how  manifold  are 
thy  works;  in  wisdom  hast  thou  made  them  all!"  his 
swift  conception  will  sweep  over  all  known  parts  of  the 
universe  in  an  instant,  and  return  glowing  with  adoration 
of  their  Creator. 

Using  incomprehensible  reading-books  draws  after  it 
the  inevitable  consequence  of  bad  reading.  Except  the 
mental  part  is  well  done,  it  is  impossible  to  read  with  any 
rhetorical  grace  or  propriety.  Could  any  one,  ignorant 
of  the  Latin  and  French  languages,  expect  to  read  a  Latin 
or  French  author  with  just  modulations  and  expressive- 
ness of  voice,  at  the  first  or  at  the  ten  thousandth  trial  ? 
And  it  matters  not  what  language  we  read,  provided  the 
mechanical  process  is  animated  by  no  vitality  of  thought. 
Something,  doubtless,  depends  upon  flexibility  and  pli- 
ancy of  physical  organs  ;  but  should  they  be  ever  so  per- 
fect, a  fitting  style  of  delivery  is  born  of  intelligence  and 
feeling  only,  and  can  have  no  other  parentage.  Without 
these,  there  will  be  no  perception  of  impropriety,  though 
epitaphs  and  epigrams  are  read  in  the  same  manner.  If 
the  pieces  of  which  the  reading-books  consist  are  among 
the  most  difficult  in  the  English  language,  is  it  not  absurd 
to  expect  that  the  least  instructed  portion  of  the  people, 
speaking  English  —  the  very  children  —  should  be  able  to 
display  their  meaning  with  grace  and  fulness  ?  To  en- 
courage children  to  strive  after  a  supposed  natural  way 
of  expressing  emotions  and  sentiments  they  do  not  feel, 
encourages  deception,  not  sincerity  ;  a  discord,  not  a  har- 
mony, between  the  movements  of  mind  and  tongue.  No 
rules,  in  regard  to  reading,  can  supply  a  defect  in  under- 
standing what  is  read.  Rhetorical  directions,  though  they 
should  equal  the  variety  of  musical  notation,  would  not 
suffice  to  indicate  the  slower  or  swifter  enunciation  of 
emphatic  or  unemphatic  words,  or  those  modulations 


542  THE  SECRETARY'S 

of  the  human  voice,  which  are  said  to  amount  to  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  in  number.  Inflections  and  the  rate 
of  utterance  are  too  volatile  and  changeful  to  be  guided 
by  rules ;  though  perceptible,  they  are  indescribable.  All 
good  reading  of  dramatic  or  poetic  works  springs  from 
emotion.  Nothing  but  the  greatest  histrionic  power  can 
express  an  emotion  without  feeling  it.  But,  once  let  the 
subject-matter  of  the  reading-lesson  be  understood,  and, 
almost  universally,  nature  will  supply  the  proper  varia- 
tions of  voice.  A  child  makes  no  mistakes  in  talking, 
for  the  simple  reason,  that  he  never  undertakes  to  say 
what  he  does  not  understand.  Nature  is  the  only  master 
of  rhetoric  on  the  play-ground.  Yet  there,  earnestness 
gives  a  quick  and  emphatic  utterance  ;  the  voice  is  rough- 
ened by  combative  feelings  ;  it  is  softened  by  all  joyous 
and  grateful  emotions,  and  it  is  projected,  as  by  the  accu- 
racy of  an  engineer,  to  strike  the  ear  of  a  distant  play- 
fellow. Nay,  so  perfect  are  undrilled  children  in  this 
matter,  that  if  any  one  of  a  group  of  twenty  makes  a 
false  cadence  or  emphasis,  or  utters  interrogatively  what 
he  meant  to  affirm,  a  simultaneous  shout  proclaims  an 
observance  of  the  blunder  ;  yet,  if  the  same  group  were 
immediately  put  to  reading  from  some  of  our  school- 
books,  their  many-sounding  voices  would  shrink  from  their 
wide  compass  into  a  one-toned  instrument ;  —  or,  what  is 
far  worse,  if  they  affected  an  expression  of  sentiment, 
they  would  cast  it  so  promiscuously  over  the  sentences  as 
to  make  good  taste  shudder.  Occasionally,  in  some  of  the 
reading-books,  there  are  lessons  which  the  scholars  fully 
understand  ;  and  I  presume  it  is  within  the  observation 
of  every  person,  conversant  with  schools,  that  the  classes 
learn  more  from  those  lessons  than  from  the  residue  of 
the  book.  The  moment  such  lessons  are  reached,  the 
dull  machinery  quickens  into  life  ;  the  moment  they  are 


SECOND    ANNUAL   REPORT.  543 

passed,  it  becomes  droning  machinery  again.  Even  the 
mechanical  part  of  reading,  therefore,  is  dependent  for  all 
its  force,  gracefulness  and  variety  upon  the  mental. 

There  are  other  features  of  our  reading-books  too  im- 
portant to  be  unnoticed,  even  in  a  brief  discussion  of 
their  merits.  Two  prominent  characteristics  are,  the  in- 
completeness of  the  subjects  of  the  reading-lessons,  con- 
sidered each  by  itself;  and  the  discordance  between  them, 
when  viewed  in  succession.  Lord  Kaimes  maintains,  in 
substance,  that  there  is  an  original,  instinctive  propensity 
or  faculty  of  the  mind,  which  demands  the  completion  or 
finishing  of  what  has  been  begun,  and  is  displeased  by  an 
untimely  or  abrupt  termination.  Other  metaphysicians 
attest  the  same  doctrine.  Whether  such  mental  tendency 
be  native  or  superinduced,  its  practical  value  can  hardly 
be  overestimated  ;  and  whatever  conduces  to  establish  or 
confirm  it,  should  be  sedulously  fostered.  In  our  state 
of  civilization,  all  questions  have  become  complex.  Hence, 
an  earnest  desire  to  learn  all  the  facts,  to  consider  all  the 
principles,  which  rightfully  go  to  modify  conclusions,  is  a 
copious  and  unfailing  source  of  practical  wisdom.  Error 
often  comes,  not  from  any  mistake  in  our  judgments  upon 
the  premises  given,  but  from  omitting  views,  as  much 
belonging  to  the  subject  as  those  which  are  considered. 
We  often  see  men,  who  will  develop  one  part  of  a  case 
with  signal  ability,  and  yet  are  always  in  the  wrong, 
because  they  overlook  other  parts,  equally  essential  to  a 
sound  result.  Thus  error  becomes  the  consequence  of 
seeing  only  parts  of  truth.  Often,  the  want  of  the  hun- 
dredth part  to  make  a  whole,  renders  the  possession  of  the 
other  ninety-nine  valueless.  If  one  planet  were  left  out 
of  our  astronomical  computations,  the  motions  of  the  solar 
system  could  not  be  explained,  though  all  about  the  others 
were  perfectly  known.  Children,  therefore,  should  not 


544  THE  SECRETARY'S 

only  be  taught,  but  habituated,  as  far  as  possible,  to  com- 
pass the  subject  of  inquiry,  to  explore  its  less  obvious 
parts,  and,  if  I  may  so  speak,  to  circumnavigate  it ;  so 
that  their  minds  will  be  impatient  of  a  want  of  complete- 
ness and  thoroughness,  and  will  resent  one-sided  views 
and  half-presentations.  Merely  a  habit  of  mind  in  a  child 
of  seeking  for  well-connected,  well-proportioned  views, 
would  give  the  surest  augury  of  a  great  man.  Now,  if 
there  be  such  a  tendency  in  the  human  mind,  urging  it 
to  search  out  the  totality  of  any  subject,  and  rewarding 
success,  not  only  with  utility,  but  with  a  lively  pleasure, 
is  not  the  reading  pupil  defrauded  both  of  the  benefit  and 
the  enjoyment,  by  having  his  mind  forcibly  transferred,  in 
rapid  succession,  from  a  few  glimpses  of  one  subject  to  as 
few  glimpses  of  another  ?  On  looking  into  a  majority  of 
the  reading-books  in  our  schools,  I  believe  it  will  be  found, 
that  they  contain  more  separate  pieces  than  leaves.  Often, 
these  pieces  are  antipodal  to  each  other  in  style,  treat- 
ment, and  subject.  There  is  a  solemn  inculcation  of  the 
doctrine  of  universal  peace  on  one  page,  and  a  martial, 
slaughter-breathing  poem  on  the  next.  I  have  a  reading- 
book,  in  which  a  catalogue  of  the  names  of  all  the  books 
of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  is  followed  immediately, 
and  on  the  same  page,  by  a  "  receipt  to  make  good  red 
ink."  But  what  is  worst  of  all  is,  that  the  lessons,  gen- 
erally, have  not,  in  any  logical  sense,  either  a  beginning 
or  an  end.  They  are  splendid  passages,  carved  out  of  an 
eloquent  oration  or  sermon,  without  premises  or  conclu- 
sion ;  —  a  page  of  compressed  thought,  taken  from  a 
didactic  poem,  without  the  slightest  indication  of  the  sys- 
tem of  doctrines  embodied  in  the  whole  ;  —  extracts  from 
forensic  arguments,  without  any  statement  of  the  facts  of 
the  case,  so  that  the  imagination  of  the  young  reader  is 
inflamed,  while  those  faculties  which  determine  the  fitness 


SECOND    ANNUAL   REPORT.  545 

and  relevancy  of  the  advocate's  appeals  are  wholly  unex- 
ercised ;  —  forty  or  fifty  lines  of  the  tenderest  pathos, 
unaccompanied  by  any  circumstances  tending  to  awaken 
sympathy,  and  leaving  the  children  to  guess  both  at  cause 
and  consolation  ;  —  and  while  no  dramatist  dares  violate 
an  absurd  rule,  that  every  tragedy  written  for  the  stage 
shall  have  five  acts,  a  single  isolated  scene,  taken  from 
the  middle  of  one  of  them,  seems  to  be  considered  a  fair 
proportion  for  a  child.  Probably  in  a  school  of  an  average 
number  of  scholars,  three  or  four  of  these  pieces  would  be 
read  at  each  exercise,  so  that,  even  if  the  pieces  were  in- 
telligible by  themselves,  the  contradictory  impressions  will 
effectually  neutralize  each  other.  Surely,  if,  according  to 
Lord  Kaimes,  there  be  an  innate  desire  or  propensity  to 
finish,  we  should  expect  that  the  children  would  manifest 
it,  in  such  cases,  by  desiring  to  have  done  with  the  book 
forever. 

What  the  ancient  rhetoricians  said  of  a  literary  work, 
—  that  it  should  always  have  a  beginning,  a  middle,  and 
an  end,  —  is  more  emphatically  true  of  reading-lessons 
for  children.  Each  piece  should  have  the  completeness 
of  a  fable  or  an  allegory.  Were  a  single  figure  cut  from 
the  historic  canvas  of  some  master-painter,  and  presented 
to  us  by  itself,  we  should  suffer  vexation  from  the  blank- 
ness  of  the  mutilated  part,  instead  of  enjoying  the  pleas- 
ure of  a  perfect  whole. 

But,  perhaps  it  will  be  said  that  children  like  variety, 
and  therefore  a  diversity  of  subjects  is  demanded.  But 
there  is  a  wide  distinction  between  what  is  variegated  and 
what  is  heterogeneous  or  conflicting.  Quite  as  well  may 
it  be  said,  that  children  like  continuity,  not  less  than 
variety.  Agencies  working  to  a  common  end,  elements 
expanding  and  evolving  into  a  full  and  symmetrical  devel- 
opment, present  a  variety  more  accordant  to  nature  than 

VOL.  i.  86 


546  THE  SECRETARY'S 

that  of  patchwork.  An  easy  and  gliding  transition  from 
topic  to  topic  is  far  preferable  to  a  sudden  revulsion, 
which  seems,  as  it  were,  to  arrest  the  mental  machinery, 
and  work  it  backwards.  Besides,  all  needful  variety  is 
as  attainable  in  long  pieces  as  in  short  ones.  An  author 
may  pass  from  grave  to  humorous,  from  description  to 
narration,  from  philosophizing  to  moralizing,  or  even  from 
prose  to  poetry,  without  shocking  the  mind  by  precipitous 
leaps  from  one  subject  to  another. 

Another  mental  exercise  of  the  highest  value  is  not 
only  overlooked,  but  rendered  wholly  impossible,  by  this 
violent  transference  of  the  mind  through  a  series  of 
repugnant  subjects.  The  true  order  of  mental  advance- 
ment is,  from  the  primitive  meaning  of  words  to  their 
modified  meaning  in  particular  connections,  and  then  to 
a  clear  apprehension  of  the  import  of  sentences  and  para- 
graphs. After  these  come  two  other  mental  processes, 
which  are  the  crowning  constituents  of  intellectual  great- 
ness. The  first  process  is  a  comparison  with  each  other 
of  all  the  parts  presented,  in  order  to  discern  their  agree- 
ment or  repugnance,  and  to  form  a  judgment  of  their 
conduciveness  to  a  proposed  result.  For  this  purpose, 
the  mind  must  summon  the  whole  train  of  thought  into 
its  presence,  and  see  for  itself  whether  the  conclusion  is 
authorized  to  which  its  assent  is  demanded.  Here  the 
reader  must  see  whether  the  part  he  now  reads,  as 
compared  with  the  preceding,  is  consistent  or  contradic- 
tory. Otherwise  he  may  be  marched  and  counter- 
marched through  all  regions  of  belief,  and  even  be  made 
to  tread  backwards  in  his  own  footsteps  without  knowing- 
it.  How  can  a  juror  judge  of  the  soundness  or  fallacy  of 
an  advocate's  argument,  if  he  cannot  reproduce  it  and 
compare  its  different  points  ;  if  he  cannot,  if  a  military 
phrase  may  be  used,  bring  up  the  long  column  of  argu- 


SECOND    ANNUAL   REPORT.  547 

merits  and  deploy  them  into  line,  so  as  to  survey  them 
all  at  a  glance  ?  Such  a  habit  of  mind  confers  a  wonder- 
ful superiority  on  its  possessor ;  and  therefore  it  should 
be  cultivated  by  all  practicable  means.  Great  as  it  is  in 
some  men,  it  has  grown  up,  under  favoring  circum- 
stances, from  the  feeblest  beginnings ;  and  the  minds  of 
all  children  may  be  managed  so  as  to  stifle  or  strengthen 
it.  Of  course,  all  consecutiveness  of  thought  is  dispersed 
by  a  scrap-book. 

I  will  take  a  few  examples  from  a  reading-book  now 
in  use  in  some  of  our  schools.  A  most  humorous  disqui- 
sition "  On  the  head-dress  of  ladies "  is  immediately 
followed  by  another  disquisition,  "  On  a  future  state  of 
eternal  happiness  or  perdition ; "  a  passage  from  Mil- 
ton's "  Creation  of  the  world  "  leads  on  "  The  facetious 
history  of  John  Gilpin ; "  Thomson's  "  Hymn  to  the 
Deity  "  ushers  in  "  Merrick's  chameleon ; "  and  two 
minutes'  reading  from  Blair's  "  Sermon  on  the  Death  of 
Christ "  precedes  Lord  Chesterfield's  "  Speech  on  Pen- 
sions." Surely,  the  habit  of  mind  I  have  endeavored  to 
describe  is  here  impossible.  There  is  no  continuity  in 
the  subject-matter  for  the  mind  to  act  on. 

The  preceding  remarks  contemplate  the  reader  or 
hearer,  as  engaged  in  fixing  the  whole  train  of  the 
author's  thought  in  his  own  mind,  for  the  purpose  of 
comparing  its  different  parts.  But  to  make  reading 
in  the  highest  degree  valuable,  another  mental  process 
still  is  necessary.  It  is  not  enough  merely  to  discern  the 
agreement  or  disagreement  of  the  associated  parts,  heard 
or  read  ;  but  in  the  progress  of  the  exercise,  we  ought  to 
look  to  the  right  and  left,  and  compare  the  positions  of 
the  speaker  or  writer  with  our  own  observation,  experi- 
ence and  former  judgment,  so  as  to  obtain  new  argu- 
ments for  our  own  opinions  where  there  is  a  coincidence, 


548  THE  SECRETARY'S 

and  be  led  to  re-examine  them  with  conscientious  impar- 
tiality when  opposed.  In  this  way  only  can  we  modify 
and  correct  our  own  views  by  the  help  of  other  minds. 
In  this  way  only  can  we  give  permanence  to  our  acquisi- 
tions ;  and  what  is  rapidity  in  acquisition,  without 
durability  in  retention  ?  It  is  the  absence  of  these  two 
mental  exercises  which  makes  so  vast  a  portion  of  the 
reading  of  our  community  utterly  barren.  Of  course, 
only  the  older  scholars  can  fairly  realize  this  degree  of 
intelligent  reading.  But  after  a  little  practice,  all  chil- 
dren are  capable  of  reading  with  such  an  open  and 
inquiring  mind,  that  if  any  thing  occurs  in  the  lesson, 
which  is  connected  with  their  own  recent  experience  or 
observation,  the  two  things  will  be  immediately  associ- 
ated. This  will  grow  into  a  habit  of  thinking  not  only 
of  what  they  read,  but  of  associating  and  comparing  their 
previous  knowledge  upon  the  same  subject  with  it ;  and 
it  will  be  the  best  possible  stimulant  to  the  inventive 
powers.  It  will  also  prevent  them  from  blindly  adopting 
whatever  is  communicated  to  them  by  others.  They 
will  acquire  such  a  power,  at  once,  of  expanded  views 
and  of  thorough  investigation,  that  if  afterwards,  in  the 
practical  business  of  life,  any  plan  or  course  of  policy  is 
presented  to  them,  and  there  be  a  difficulty  in  it,  they 
will  see  it;  and  if  there  be  any  way  of  obviating  that 
difficulty,  they  will  see  that  also. 

To  mitigate  the  calamity  of  unintelligent  reading, 
various  inventions  have  been  sought  out ;  by  some  of 
which  it  may  have  been  slightly  relieved,  while  others 
seem  wholly  illusive.  Spelling-books  have  been  pre- 
pared, purporting  to  give  synonymous  words,  arranged 
in  parallel  columns.  On  some  pages  two  columns,  on 
others  three  columns,  are  found,  where  the  words,  which 
are  placed  horizontally,  in  regard  to  each  other,  are 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  549 

alleged  to  be  synonymous.  Thus  single  words  are  sup- 
posed to  be  defined  by  single  words,  as  in  the  following 
example,  which  is  taken  from  one  of  them :  — 

"  comedy,        tragedy,        drama." 

It  is  a  remark  of  Dr.  Blair,  that  "  hardly  in  any  lan- 
guage are  there  two  words  that  convey  the  same  idea." 
Dr.  Campbell,  also,  the  author  of  that^able  work,  "  The 
Philosophy  of  Rhetoric,"  observes,  that  "  there  are  few 
words  in  any  language,  (particularly  such  as  relate  to 
operations  and  feelings  of  the  mind,)  which  are  strictly 
univocal."  To  teach  children  that  any  considerable 
number,  even  of  the  primitive  words  in  the  English  lan- 
guage, can  be  reduced  to  doublets  and  triplets  of  syno- 
nymes,  or  that  there  are  many  cases  where  words  can  be 
interchangeably  used,  would  subject  them  to  the  cer- 
tainty, both  of  being  mistaken  by  others,  and  of  mistak- 
ing whatever  they  might  hear  or  read  ;  and  it  would 
destroy  the  power  of  aptness  in  the  selection  of  words, 
upon  which  all  the  accuracy,  elegance  and  force  of 
diction  depend.  Surely,  if  a  large  majority  of  the  words 
of  our  language  have,  each,  one  or  two  synonymous 
words,  it  would  seem  advisable  for  the  government  of 
the  "  Republic  of  Letters,"  at  once  to  reduce  it  to  one- 
half  or  one-third  of  its  present  bulk,  by  discarding  the 
superfluous  parts,  and  thus  save  the  young  the  labor  of 
learning  and  the  old  the  trouble  of  writing  and  reading 
a  double  or  treble-sized  vocabulary.  But  if,  as  is  further 
observed  by  Dr.  Blair,  any  person,  "  conversant  with  the 
propriety  of  the  language,  will  always  be  able  to  observe 
something  that  distinguishes  any  two  of  its  words,"  then 
a  book  would  be  greatly  to  be  preferred  which  should 
show  that  it  has  no  synouymes.  Even  if  our  language 


550  THE  SECRETARY'S 

furnished  synonymes,  and  these  were  carefully  collated, 
according  to  the  above  plan,  it  would  seem  quite  as  possi- 
ble for  the  learner,  with  a  little  additional  labor,  to  get 
two  or  three  words,  without  any  glimmer  of  meaning,  as 
to  get  one.  It  is  rarely  possible  to  explain  any  word  of 
unknown  meaning  by  any  other  single  word.  Our  most 
common  words  are  susceptible,  probably,  of  a  hundred 
significations,  according  to  the  connection  in  which  they 
are  used.  Their  value  is  constantly  changing,  according 
to  the  context.  It  is  like  the  value  of  pieces  upon  a 
chess-board;  the  same-  piece,  in  one  position,  being 
almost  worthless,  in  another  position  commanding  the 
game.  It  is  this  fact  which  makes  it  such  vanity  and 
uselessness  to  read  words,  without  reference  to  their 
significations. 

Another  method  for  teaching  significations  consists  in 
the  use  of  the  dictionary.  This  is  far  less  fallacious 
than  the  former,  because  no  dictionary  ever  defines  by  a 
single  word.  It  usually  gives  a  number  of  words  and 
short  sentences,  from  a  comparison  of  which,  the  princi- 
pal idea,  common  to  them  all,  can  be  separated  from  the 
accessory  ideas  peculiar  to  each.  Although,  therefore, 
it  is  a  meagre  resource  for  a  learner,  it  is  far  better  than 
any  definition,  by  a  single  inflexible  word,  can  be.  There 
are.  however,  very  serious  objections  to  this  mode. 
Should  the  pupil  take  the  words  of  the  dictionary,  in 
course,  he  would  study  double  the  number  which  he 
will  have  occasion  to  use  in  after-life  ;  and  it  seems  a 
misfortune,  that  scholars,  who  do  not  go  to  school  half 
long  enough  to  learn  what  is  needful,  should  spend 
half  their  time  while  there  in  learning  what  is  superflu- 
ous. Nor  do  dictionaries  indicate  what  words  are  in 
reputable  use,  what  are  more  appropriate  to  poetical, 
what  to  prose  writings,  and  so  forth.  But  should  the 


SECOND   ANNUAL   REPORT.  551 

words  to  be  studied  or  omitted  be  marked  for  the 
learner,  or  a  dictionary  be  prepared,  containing  the  for- 
mer only ;  still  an  insuperable  objection  would  remain, 
in  consequence  of  the  order,  or  rather  the  entire  want  of 
order,  in  regard  to  meaning,  in  which  the  words  are 
presented.  For,  while  the  words  come  alphabetically, 
the  ideas  come  chaotically.  The  learner  is  whirled  back- 
wards and  forwards,  carried  through  time  and  space, 
presented  witli  matter  and  mind,  principal  and  incident, 
action  and  passion,  all  in  a  single  column.  Nothing  can 
be  conceived  more  heterogeneous  than  the  ideas  neces- 
sarily resulting  from  an  alphabetical  arrangement  of  the 
words ;  and  were  children  to  be  drilled  at  much  length 
on  such  exercises,  it  would  argue  great  soundness  of 
mind  if  their  intellects  were  not  a  little  unsettled.  Sup- 
pose a  professor  in  the  natural  sciences,  instead  of  teach- 
ing his  sciences  in  a  natural  order,  should  go  into  the 
fields,  and  halting  anywhere,  at  random,  should  take  a 
spot  no  larger  than  is  sufficient  for  the  growth  of  a  single 
blade  of  grass,  and  should  proceed  to  lecture  upon  what- 
ever was  found  at  that  single  point.  He  would  be 
obliged  to  run  over  the  subjects  of  geology,  mineralogy, 
chemistry,  botany,  and  perhaps  entomology,  without 
leaving  the  spot.  Nor  would  this  be  a  course  half  so 
devious  and  erratic,  as  that  of  studying  definitions 
through  the  columns  of  a  dictionary. 

Another  device  to  fill  vacuity  by  pouring  in  vacuity,  is 
this  ;  —  a  book  is  prepared,  in  which  the  spelling  and  read- 
ing lessons  alternate.  First  come  a  few  columns  of  words, 
and  then  a  page  of  apothegms  and  synopses  of  universal 
truths,  not  occupying,  perhaps,  more  than  a  line  each ; 
some  one  word  in  the  spelling-columns  being  incorporated 
into  each  of  these  short  sentences.  The  force  of  the  rea- 
sons against  the  preceding  mode  is  but  little  abated  when 


.552  THE  SECRETARY'S 

applied  to  this.  This  motley  company  of  sentences  repels 
all  interest  on  the  part  of  the  learner.  Topics,  more 
alien  from  each  other,  and  more  bewildering  to  the  mind, 
could  not  be  found,  if  one  were  to  stick  a  pin  through  all 
the  leaves  of  a  book,  and  then  to  read  continuously  all  the 
sentences  through  which  the  puncture  was  made.  As 
many-colored  and  diverse-shaped  objects,  flitting  swiftly 
before  the  eye,  will  make  no  stable  impression  upon  the 
retina  ;  so  a  multitude  of  incongruous  ideas  and  feelings, 
trooping  hurriedly  before  the  mental  vision,  can  leave  no 
enduring  traces  of  outline,  aspect  or  quality  upon  the 
mind.  A  rapid  succession  of  discordant  images  will  inflict 
distraction  upon  the  mind  of  an  adult ;  —  how  much  more 
certain  are  they  to  do  it  upon  that  of  a  child  !  The  power 
of  passing  abruptly  from  one  subject  of  thought  to  an- 
other, without  mental  disturbance,  requires  long 'habit 
and  familiarity  with  the  matters  presented.  Children  can 
have  neither. 

But  I  will  not  occupy  further  time  in  exposing  empiri- 
cal plans  for  acquiring  a  ready  and  apposite  use  of  our 
language.  After  experimenting  with  every  scheme,  I 
believe  we  shall  be  driven  back  to  a  single  resource  ;  — 
and  not  reluctantly,  for  that  resource  is  sure  and  adequate. 
Language  is  to  be  learned,  where  it  is  used,  as  skill  in 
handling  the  implements  of  an  art  is  acquired  by  prac- 
tising with  them  upon  their  appropriate  objects.  It  is  to 
be  learned  by  conversation,  and  by  the  daily  reading  of 
such  books,  as  with  the  aid  of  free  questioning  on  the  part 
of  the  pupil,  and  full  explanations  on  that  of  the  teacher, 
can  be  thoroughly  mastered.  The  ideas  of  the  learner 
are  to  be  brought  out,  and  set,  objectively,  before  his  own 
eyes,  like  a  picture.  Any  error  can  then  be  pointed  out. 
The  boundary-line  can  be  traced  between  his  knowledge 
and  his  ignorance.  A  pupil  may  recite  a  lesson  with 


SECOND  ANNUAL   REPORT.  553 

literal  correctness,  respecting  the  boundaries  of  the  differ- 
ent States  in  the  Union  ;  and  it  may  be  impossible  for  the 
teacher  to  determine  whether  this  is  done  by  a  mental 
reference  to  divisional  lines  and  adjacent  territory,  or 
whether  it  is  done  by  remembering  the  words  as  they 
stand  in  the  geography.  But  if  the  pupil  can  delineate 
a  correct  map  of  the  United  States  on  a  blackboard,  it  is 
then  certain  that  he  has  the  prototype  of  it  in  his  mind. 
So  if  the  pupil  applies  language  to  something  known  to 
both  parties,  the  teacher  can  then  perceive  whether  the 
language  is  adjusted  to  the  thing ;  and,  if  it  is  not,  he  can 
ascertain  whether  the  error  arises  from  a  misconception  of 
the  thing,  or  from  an  unskilful  use  of  words  in  describing 
it.  Oral  instruction,  therefore,  to  some  extent,  respecting 
known  objects  and  such  as  can  be  graphically  described, 
should  precede  reading;  and  should  accompany  it  ever 
afterwards,  though,  perhaps,  with  diminishing  frequency. 
Early  practice,  in  noting  the  real  distinctions  in  the  quali- 
ties of  sensible  substances,  will  give  accuracy  to  language ; 
and  when  the  child  passes  from  present  and  sensible 
objects  to  unseen  or  mental  ones,  a  previously  acquired 
accuracy  of  language  will  impart  accuracy  to  the  new 
ideas.  Hence,  too,  the  scenes  of  the  first  reading-lessons 
should  be  laid  in  the  household,  the  play-ground,  among 
the  occupations  of  men,  and  the  surrounding  objects  of 
nature,  so  that  the  child's  notions  can  be  rectified  at  every 
step  in  the  progress.  This  rectification  will  be  impossible, 
if  the  notions  of  the  pupil  can  be  brought  to  no  common 
and  intelligible  standard.  We  must  believe,  too,  that  the 
Creator  of  the  human  mind,  and  of  the  material  world  in 
which  it  is  placed,  established  a  harmony  and  correspond- 
ence between  them  ;  so  that  the  objects  of  nature  are  pre- 
adapted  to  the  development  of  the  intellect,  as  the  tempers, 
dispositions  and  manners  of  the  family  are  to  develop  the 


554  THE  SECRETARY'S 

moral  powers.  The  objects  of  natural  history,  —  descrip- 
tions of  beasts,  birds,  fishes,  insects,  trees,  flowers,  and 
unorganized  substances,  should  form  the  subjects  of  the 
earliest  intellectual  lessons.  A  knowledge  of  these  facts 
lays  the  foundation  for  a  knowledge  of  the  principles  or 
sciences  which  respectively  grow  out  of  them.  We  are 
physically  connected  with  earth,  air,  water,  light ;  we  are 
dependent,  for  health  and  comfort,  upon  a  knowledge  of 
their  properties  and  uses,  and  many  of  the  vastest  struc- 
tures of  the  intellect  are  reared  upon  these  foundations. 
Lineally  related  to  these  is  the  whole  family  of  the  useful 
arts.  These  classes  of  subjects  are  not  only  best  calcu- 
lated to  foster  the  early  growth  of  the  perceptive,  inven- 
tive and  reasoning  powers  ;  but  the  language  appropriate 
to  them  excludes  vagueness  and  ambiguity,  and  compels 
every  mistake  to  betray  itself.  Voyages  and  travels,  also, 
accompanied  as  they  always  should  be  with  geography, 
present  definite  materials  both  for  thought  and  expres- 
sion. Just  as  early  as  a  habit  of  exactness  is  formed  in 
using  words  to  express  things,  all  the  subjects  of  con- 
sciousness may  be  successively  brought  within  the  domain 
of  instruction.  The  ideal  world  can  then  be  entered,  as 
it  were  with  a  lamp  in  the  hand,  and  all  its  wonders  por- 
trayed. Affection,  justice,  veracity,  impartiality,  self-sac- 
rifice, love  to  man  and  love  to  God,  —  all  carried  out  into 
action,  —  can  be  illustrated  by  examples,  after  the  learner 
has  acquired  a  medium  through  which  he  can  see  all  the 
circumstances  which  make  deeds  magnanimous,  heroic, 
god-like.  Here  the  biography  of  great  and  good  men 
belongs.  This  is  a  department  of  literature,  equally  vivify- 
ing to  the  intellect  and  the  morals;  —  bestowing  useful 
knowledge  and  inspiring  noble  sentiments.  And  much 
of  the  language  appropriate  to  it  almost  belongs  to  an- 
other dialect ;  —  fervid,  electric,  radiant.  At  the  earliest 


SECOND    ANNUAL   REPORT.  555 

practicable  period,  let  composition  or  translation  be  com- 
menced. By  composition,  I  do  not  mean  an  essay  "  On 
Friendship,"  or  "  On  Honor ;  "  nor  that  a  young  Miss  of 
twelve  years  should  write  a  homily  "  On  the  duties  of  a 
Queen,"  or  a  lad,  impatient  of  his  nonage,  "  On  the  short- 
ness of  human  life  ;"  —  but  that  the  learner  should  apply, 
on  familiar  subjects,  the  language  he  thinks  best,  to  the 
ideas  and  emotions  he  perceives  clearest  and  feels  strong- 
est, to  see  how  well  he  can  make  them  fit  each  other,  —  first 
in  sentences,  or  short  paragraphs,  then  in  more  extended 
productions.  If  the  pupil's  knowledge  outruns  his  lan- 
guage, —  as  is  often  the  case  with  the  most  promising,  — 
then  a  more  copious  diction  is  to  be  sought ;  but  if  lan- 
guage overgrows  ideas,  it  is  to  be  reduced,  though  it  be 
by  knife  and  cautery. 

It  is  only  in  this  way,  —  by  reading  or  translating  good 
authors,  aided  by  oral  instructions  and  by  lexicographers, 
but,  most  of  all,  by  early  habit,  —  that  any  one  can 
acquire  such  easy  mastery  over  the  copiousness  and  flexi- 
bility of  our  mother-tongue,  as  to  body  forth  definitely, 
and  at  will,  any  thought  or  thing,  or  any  combination  of 
thoughts  and  things,  found  in  the  consciousness  of  men, 
or  in  the  amplitude  of  nature  ;  —  in  no  other  way  can 
any  one  acquire  that  terseness  and  condensing  force  of 
expression,  which  is  a  constituent  in  the  highest  oratory, 
which  clusters  weightiest  thoughts  into  briefest  spaces, 
reminding  without  repeating,  each  sentence  speeding 
straight  onward  to  the  end,  while  every  salient  epithet 
opens  deep  vistas  to  the  right  and  left ;  —  and  in  this  way 
alone  can  any  one  ever  learn  the  picture-words  of  that 
tongue,  wherewith  the  poet  repays  nature  fourfold  for  all 
her  beauties,  giving  her  back  brighter  landscapes,  and 
clearer  waters,  and  sweeter  melodies,  than  any  she  had 
ever  lent  to  him.  By  such  processes  alone  can  one  of 


556  THE  SECRETAEY'S 

the  most  wonderful  gifts  of  God,  —  the  faculty  of  speech, 
—  be  dutifully  cultivated  and  enlarged. 

It  would  be  rendering  a  useful  service,  to  follow  out, 
rightly,  and  in  detail,  the  natural  consequences  of  this 
imperfect  manner  of  teaching  our  language,  after  the  chil- 
dren have  passed  from  the  enforced  routine  of  the  school- 
room to  a  free  choice  of  their  own  intellectual  amuse- 
ments and  recreations.  I  can  here  only  hint  at  them, 
The  mere  language  of  sensation  and  of  appetite  is  com- 
mon to  all.  Even  the  most  illiterate  are  familiar  with  it. 
Every  one,  too,  either  from  his  own  experience,  or  from 
the  observation  of  others,  is  made  acquainted  with  the 
emotions  of  fear,  hope,  jealousy,  anger,  revenge,  and  with 
the  explosive  phraseology  in  which  those  passions  are 
vented.  Now  the  diction,  appropriate  and  almost  peculiar 
to  the  manifestations  of  the  coarser  and  more  animal  part 
of  our  nature,  is  almost  as  distinct  as  though  it  were  a 
separate  language  from  the  style  in  which  questions  of 
social  right  and  duty,  questions  of  morals,  and  even  of 
philosophy,  when  popularly  treated,  are  discussed.  Young 
minds  love  excitement,  and,  to  very  many  of  those  who 
are  just  entering  upon  the  stage  of  life,  books  furnish  the 
readiest  and  the  most  reputable  means  for  mental  stimulus. 
What  else,  then,  can  reasonably  be  expected,  than  that 
the  graduates  of  our  schoolrooms,  who,  by  acquiring  a 
knowledge  of  the  coarser  and  more  sensual  parts  of  our 
language,  possess  a  key  to  that  kind  of  reading  which  is 
mainly  conversant  with  the  lower  propensities  of  human 
nature,  should  use  the  key  with  which  they  have  been 
furnished,  to  satisfy  desires  which  nature  has  imparted  ? 
But,  having  no  key  wherewith  to  open  the  treasures  of 
intellect,  of  taste,  of  that  humane  literature  which  is 
purified  from  the  dross  of  base  passions,  they  turn  away 
from  these  elevating  themes  in  weariness  and  disgust, 


SECOND    ANNUAL   REPORT.  557 

and  thus  stifle  the  better  aspirations  of  their  nature. 
These  treasures  are  locked  up  in  a  language  they  do  not 
understand ;  and  no  person  will  long  endure  the  weariness 
of  reading  without  thought  or  emotion.  May  not  this 
explain,  in  part  at  least,  why  our  youth  of  both  sexes, 
who  wish  to  know  something,  or  to  appear  to  know  some- 
thing, of  what  is  called  the  literature  of  the  day,  spend 
months  and  years  over  the  despicable  "  love  and  murder  " 
books,  by  which  the  reading  portion  of  mankind  is  so 
sorely  afflicted?  —  books  which  inflame  passions  and 
appetites  that  are  strong  enough  by  nature,  while  they 
blind  and  stupefy  every  faculty  and  sentiment  which  exalt 
the  character  into  wisdom  and  excellence.  The  most 
limited  fund  of  words,  and  a  mere  intellectual  pauperism 
in  powers  of  thought,  are  abundantly  sufficient  to  enable 
one  to  understand  a  buccaneer's  history,  and  all  its  intoxi- 
cating incidents  of  piracies,  murders,  and  scuttled  ships  ; 
—  or  to  get  vivid  notions  of  loathsome  crimes,  perpe- 
trated by  the  unfortunate  victims  of  ignorance  and  of 
vicious  institutions.  For  the  readers  of  such  books,  the 
best  minds  in  the  world  might  as  well  have  never  been 
created.  By  a  different  course  of  training,  many  of  our 
youth,  whose  imaginations  are  now  revelling  over  these 
flagitious  works,  might  have  been  prepared  for  high  en- 
joyment won  from  companionship  with  noble  characters, 
from  a  study  of  their  own  spiritual  natures,  or  from  an 
investigation  of  the  sublime  laws  of  the  material  universe, 
and  the  operation  of  its  beneficent  physical  agencies. 

Another  large  class  of  our  citizens  scarcely  consult  any 
oracle,  either  for  their  literature  or  for  their  politics,  but 
the  daily  newspaper.  Wholly  ignorant  of  the  language 
in  which  argumentative  and  profound  disquisitions,  on 
subjects  of  policy  or  questions  of  government,  are  carried 
on,  why  should  we  wonder  that  so  many  of  them  feel 


558  THE  SECRETARY'S 

less  interest  in  dispassionate,  instructive  appeals  to  reason, 
than  in  the  savage  idioms  of  party  warfare  ?  The  states 
of  mind  thus  excited  are  wholly  incompatible  with  dis- 
criminating judgment,  with  impartiality,  with  that  delib- 
eration and  truth-seeking  anxiety,  which  are  indispensable 
to  the  formation  of  correct  opinions,  and  which  lead  to 
conduct  worthy  of  free  citizens.  I  would  not  attribute 
too  efficient  an  agency  to  this  cause,  but  if  it  only  tends 
to  such  disastrous  results  by  the  slightest  approximation, 
it  furnishes  another  powerful  argument  for  a  thorough 
reform  in  our  practice. 

During  the  first  year  of  my  officiating  as  Secretary  of 
the  Board,  very  numerous  applications  were  made  to  me. 
from  almost  all  parts  of  the  State,  to  recommend  class- 
books  for  the  schools,  or  to  state  what  books  were  consid- 
ered best  by  the  Board,  or  by  myself.  As  the  Board  had 
adopted  no  order,  nor  were  invested  with  any  express 
authority,  by  law,  upon  the  subject,  I  uniformly  abstained 
even  from  expressing  my  opinion  :  but  for  the  purpose  of 
learning,  authentically,  what  were  the  prevalent  views 
of  the  community,  I  inserted,  in  my  last  circular  to  the 
school  committees,  the  following  question  :  "  Would  it  be 
generally  acceptable  to  the  friends  of  Education  in  your 
town,  to  have  the  Board  of  Education  recommend  books 
for  the  use  of  the  Schools?"  This  gave  to  school  com- 
mittees ample  opportunity  to  consult  with  the  friends  of 
Education,  in  their  respective  towns,  and  opened  a  way 
to  obtain  a  full  and  fair  representation  of  the  wishes  of 
the  public.  From  this,  as  the  principal  source  of  infor- 
mation, somewhat  corroborated  and  extended  by  other 
means,  it  appears  that  the  friends  of  Education,  in  twenty 
towns,  containing,  in  the  aggregate,  a  population  of  about 
thirty-five  thousand  inhabitants,  declare  that  such  a  recom- 
mendation would  not  be  acceptable.  In  one,  containing 


SECOND    ANNUAL    REPORT.  559 

eighteen  thousand  inhabitants,  they  say,  "  we  feel  so  well 
satisfied  with  our  own  selection  of  books,  as  to  have  no 
wish,  farther  than  to  see  how  far  the  views  of  different 
practical  men  agree."  Ten  towns  wish  to  have  the  Board 
recommend,  but  not  prescribe;  two  towns,  to  have  the 
Board  recommend  and  prescribe ;  and  one,  that  the  Board 
may  be  directed  to  prescribe  by  an  act  of  the  Legislature. 
It  also  appears  that  the  friends  of  Education  in  towns 
containing  more  than  seven-eighths  of  the  population  of 
the  State  are  in  favor  of  having  the  Board  of  Education 
recommend  books  for  the  use  of  the  Schools. 

The  expediency  of  a  recommendation,  by  the  Board,  of 
class-books  for  the  schools,  leaving  it  optional  with  the 
committees  to  adopt  such  recommendation  or  not,  is  a 
question  so  exclusively  within  the  competency  of  the 
Board,  that  I  shall  not  presume  to  express  any  opinion 
concerning  it.  Considerations  for  and  against  such  rec- 
ommendation may  be  supposed  to  bear  with  different 
degrees  of  force,  in  regard  to  different  species  of  books ; 
—  as  geographies,  grammars,  and  spelling  or  reading 
books.  In  my  Report  of  last  year,  I  set  forth  some  of 
the  very  serious  inconveniences  resulting  from  the  multi- 
plicity of  books  now  in  use.  I  will  here  only  add,  that 
if  the  Board  should  assume  the  labor  of  examining  and 
recommending  any  kind  of  school-books,  I  trust  they  will 
not  allow  so  favorable  an  opportunity  to  pass,  without 
securing  a  better  quality  of  materials  and  workmanship 
than  go  to  the  formation  of  some  books  now  in  use.  It 
is  too  obvious  to  be  mentioned,  that  in  case  of  a  uniform- 
ity of  books,  they  would  be  furnished  much  cheaper  than 
at  present,  as  measures  would,  of  course,  be  taken  to 
prevent  monopoly. 

As  the  law  now  stands,  in  order  to  entitle  a  town  to 
receive  its  distributive  share  of  the  income  of  the  School 


560  THE  SECRETARY'S 

Fund,  the  committee  must  make  oath,  that  the  town,  "  at 

their  last  annual  meeting,  raised  the  sum  of dollars, 

to  pay  the  wages  of  instructors  solely"  In  preparing  the 
last  "Annual  Abstract,"  I  found  this  certificate  the  sub- 
ject of  frequent  alteration.  Although  the  law  prescribed 
a  certain  form  of  oath  as  a  condition  precedent,  the 
school  committees  altered  the  form,  and  then  made  oath 
to  a  form  unknown  to  the  law.  The  reason  was,  that 
very  few  towns  raised  money  "  to  pay  the  wages  of  in- 
structors solely,"  and,  therefore,  though  they  had  raised 
a  sufficient  sum  for  schools  to  entitle  them  to  a  share  of 
the  fund,  they  had  not  raised  it  in  the  particular  form 
contemplated  by  the  certificate. 

I  endeavored  this  year  to  ascertain  the  form  of  the 
vote,  adopted  by  the  towns,  in  raising  school-money. 
Owing,  however,  to  a  non-compliance  on  the  part  of  many 
school  committees  with  my  request,  I  have  obtained  a 
copy  of  the  form  used  the  current  year,  from  only  one 
hundred  and  ten  towns.  But  six  of  these  one  hundred 
and  ten  towns  raised  money  "  to  pay  the  wages  of  instruct- 
ors solely."  In  almost  all  the  others,  the  terms  used  are 
"  for  the  support  of  schools,"  or  some  equivalent  expres- 
sion. It  is  very  desirable  that  the  certificate  should  be 
conformed  to  the  vote,  or  the  vote  to  the  certificate. 

In  my  Report  of  last  year,  I  exposed  the  alarming  defi- 
ciency of  moral  and  religious  instruction  then  found  to 
exist  in  our  schools.  That  deficiency,  in  regard  to  re- 
ligious instruction,  could  only  be  explained  by  supposing 
that  school  committees,  whose  duty  it  is  to  prescribe 
school-books,  had  not  found  any  books  at  once  expository 
of  the  doctrines  of  revealed  religion,  and  also  free  from 
such  advocacy  of  the  "  tenets "  of  particular  sects  of 
Christians,  as  brought  them,  in  their  opinion,  within  the 
scope  of  the  legal  prohibition.  And  hence  they  felt 


SECOND    ANNUAL   REPORT.  561 

obliged  to  exclude  books,  which,  but  for  their  denomina- 
tional views,  they  would  have  been  glad  to  introduce. 
No  candid  mind  could  ever,  for  a  moment,  accept  this  as 
evidence  of  an  indifference  to  moral  and  religious  instruc- 
tion in  the  schools;  but  only  as  proof  that  proper  manuals 
had  not  been  found,  by  which  the  great  object  of  moral 
and  religious  instruction  could  be  secured,  without  any 
infringement  of  the  statutory  regulation.  The  time  for 
the  committees  to  make  another  return  not  having  yet 
arrived,  it  is  impossible  to  say,  whether  books,  having  the 
above  object  in  view,  have  been  since  introduced  into  any 
more  of  the  schools.  I  am  happy,  however,  to  say,  that 
a  knowledge  of  that  deficiency,  then  for  the  first  time  ex- 
posed to  the  public,  has  turned  the  attention  of  some  of 
the  friends  of  Education  to  the  subject,  and  that  efforts 
are  now  making  to  supply  the  desideratum.  Of  course, 
I  shall  not  be  here  understood  as  referring  to  the  Scrip- 
tures, as  it  is  well  known  that  they  are  used  in  almost  all 
the  schools,  either  as  a  devotional  or  as  a  reading  book. 

I  close  this  second  Report,  inspired  by  opposite  reasons 
to  renewed  exertions  in  this  sacred  cause ;  —  being  not 
more  encouraged  by  what  has  already  been  accomplished, 
than  stimulated  by  what  remains  to  be  done. 


BOSTON,  Dec.  26, 1838. 
VOL.  i.  36 


HORACE   MANN, 
Secretary  of  the  Board  of  Education. 


APPENDIX. 


(A)  p.  94. 

THE  detailed  reports  made  to  the  Board  of  Education  in  compli- 
ance with  this  provision  proved  to  be  the  most  important  act  of  the 
movement  that  created  it.  The  Secretary  was  occupied  three  months 
of  every  alternate  year  in  collating  from  these  reports  such  extracts  as 
were  necessary  to  show  the  9ondition  of  the  schools ;  and  these  were 
published  in  a  book  called  "  Abstract  of  School  Returns,"  which  were 
distributed  to  each  town,  and  enabled  all  to  see  what  improvements 
or  what  deficiencies  existed.  This  work  has  gone  over  the  world,  and 
has  been  considered  the  most  valuable  educational  document  ever 
printed.  From  it  was  subsequently  gathered  a  statistical  pamphlet 
called  the  "  Graduated  Tables,"  which,  Mr.  Mann  used  to  say,  was  the 
only  stroke  of  genius  that  characterized  the  administration  of  his  office. 
It  recorded  the  towns  in  the  order  of  the  appropriations  of  money  for 
education  made  by  each ;  and  such  was  the  stimulating  effect,  that 
from  year  to  year  the  totvns  changed  places  in  a  very  striking  manner. 
It  was  found  that  many  small  towns  appropriated  far  more  money  in 
proportion  to  the  population  than  even  some  of  the  large  cities.  The 
transformation  of  the  list  was  sometimes  so  great  as  to  show  the  name 
of  a  town  that  stood  at  the  foot  of  the  list  one  year,  at  the  head  of  it 
the  next.  So  eloquent  are  figures. 


(B.) 

Letter  from  DR.  SAMUEL   B.  WOODWARD,    Superintendent  of  the 
State  Lunatic  Hospital  at  Worcester.  —  See  p.  441. 

Worcester,  March  14,  1838. 
HON.  HORACE  MANN,  Secretary  of  the  Board  of  Education  : 

DEAR  SIR,  —  Your  note  and  queries,  respecting  the  construction 
of  schoolhouses,  came  to  hand  yesterday.  I  improve  the  earliest 
opportunity  to  reply.  663 


564  APPENDIX. 

First,  as  to  the  ill  effects  of  high  and  narrow  benches,  and  seats 
without  backs. 

High  and  narrow  seats  are  not  only  extremely  uncomfortable  for  the 
young  scholar,  tending  constantly  to  make  him  restless  and  noisy,  dis- 
turbing his  temper,  and  preventing  his  attention  to  his  books,  but  they 
have  also  a  direct  tendency  to  produce  deformity  of  the  limbs. 

If  the  seat  is  too  narrow,  half  the  thigh  only  rests  upon  it;  if  too 
high,  the  feet  cannot  reach  the  floor ;  the  consequence  is,  that  the 
limbs  are  suspended  on  the  centre  of  the  thigh.  Now,  as  the  limbs 
of  children  are  pliable  or  flexible,  they  are  easily  made  to  grow  out  of 
shape,  and  become  crooked,  »y  such  an  awkward  and  unnatural  posi- 
tion. 

Seats  without  backs  have  an  equally  unfavorable  influence  upon  the 
spinal  column.  If  no  rest  is  afforded  the  backs  of  children  while  seated, 
they  almost  necessarily  assume  a  bent  and  crooked  position  ;  such  a  posi- 
tion often  assumed,  or  long  continued,  tends  to  that  deformity  which  has 
become  extremely  common  with  children  in  modern  times,  and  leads 
to  disease  of  the  spine  in  innumerable  instances,  especially  with  deli- 
cate female  children. 

The  seats  in  schoolrooms  should  be  so  constructed  that  the  whole 
thigh  can  rest  upon  them,  and  at  the  same  time  the  foot  stand  firmly 
upon  the  floor  ;  all  seats  should  have  backs  high  enough  to  reach  the 
shoulder-blades  ;  low  backs,  although  better  than  none,  are  far  less  easv 
and  useful  than  high  ones,  and  will  not  prevent  pain  and  uneasiness  after 
sitting  a  considerable  time.  Young  children  should  be  permitted  to 
change  their  position  often,  to  stand  on  their  feet,  to  march,  and  to  visit 
the  play-ground.  One  hour  is  as  long  as  any  child,  under  ten  years  of 
;>ge,  should  be  confined  at  once ;  and  four  hours  as  long  as  he  should  be 
confined  to  his  seat  in  one  day. 

Second  Query.  —  "  What  general  effects  will  be  produced  upon  the 
health  of  children  by  stinting  their  supply  of  fresh  air  through  defects 
in  ventilation  ?  " 

An  answer  to  this  query  will  involve  some  chemical  principles,  in 
connection  with  the  animal  economy,  not  extensively  and  fully  under" 
stood 

The  blood,  as  it  circulates  through  the  vessels  in  our  bodies,  accumu- 
lates a  deleterious  principle  called  CARBON,  which  is  a  poison  itself, 
and  must  be  discharged  frequently,  or  it  becomes  dangerous  to  life. 
[u  the  process  of  respiration  or  breathing,  this  poisonous  principle 
unites  in  the  lungs  with  a  proportion  of  the  oxygen  of  the  air,  and 


APPENDIX.  565 

forms  carbonic  acid,  which  is  expelled  from  the  lungs  at  each  expira- 
tion. The  proportion  of  oxygen  in  the  air  received  into  the  lungs  is 
about  twenty-one  in  the  hundred ;  in  the  air  expelled,  about  eighteen 
in  the  hundred  ;  —  the  proportion  of  carbonic  acid  in  the  inhaled 
air  is  one  part  in  the  hundred,  in  the  exhaled  air  about  four  parts  in 
the  hundred.  By  respiration,  an  adult  person  spoils,  or  renders  unfit 
for  this  vital  process,  about  one  gallon  of  air  in  a  minute.  By  this 
great  consumption  of  pure  air  in  a  schoolroom,  made  tight  and  filled  with 
scholars,  it  will  be  easily  seen  that  the  whole  air  will  soon  be  rendered 
impure,  and  unfit  for  the  purpose  for  which  it  is  designed.  If  we  con- 
tinue to  inhale  this  contaminated  air,  rendered  constantly  worse  the 
longer  we  are  confined  in  it,  this  process  in  the  lungs  will  not  be  per- 
formed in  a  perfect  manner ;  the  carbon  will  not  all  escape  from  the 
blood,  but  will  be  circulated  to  the  brain,  and  produce  its  deleterious 
effects  upon  that  organ,  to  which  it  is  a  poison.  If  no  opportunity  be 
afforded  for  its  regular  escape,  death  will  take  place  in  a  few  minutes, 
as  in  strangulation  by  a  cord,  drowning,  and  immersion  in  irrespirable 
air.  The  cause  of  death  is  the  retention  and  circulation  of  this  poison- 
ous principle  in  all  these  cases. 

If  a  smaller  portion  is  allowed  to  circulate  through  the  vessels  than 
will  prove  fatal,  it  produces  stupor,  syncope,  and  other  dangerous 
effects  upon  the  brain  and  nerves.  In  still  less  quantity,  it  produces 
dulness,  sleepiness,  and  incapacitates  us  for  all  mental  efforts  and 
physical  activity.  The  dulness  of  a  school,  after  having  been  long  in 
session  in  a  close  room,  and  of  a  congregation,  during  a  protracted 
religious  service,  are  often  attributable  to  this  cause  mainly,  if  not 
soldi/.  Both  teacher  and  scholar,  preacher  and  hearer,  are  often 
greatly  affected  in  this  way,  without  being  at  all  sensible  of  the  cause. 
Fifty  scholars  will  very  soon  contaminate  the  air  of  a  schoolroom  at 
the  rate  of  a  gallon  a  minute. 

Suppose  a  schoolroom  to  be  thirty  feet  square  and  nine  feet  high.  »t 
will  contain  13,9'JG,000  cubic  inches  of  atmospheric  air.  According  to 
Davy  and  Thompson,  two  accurate  and  scientific  chemists,  one  indi- 
vidual respires  and  contaminates  6,500  cubic  inches  of  air  in  a  minuto. 
Fifty  scholars  will  respire  325,000  cubic  inches  in  the  same  time.  In 
about  forty  minutes,  all  the  air  of  such  a  room  will  have  become  con- 
taminated, if  fresh  supplies  are  not  provided.  The  quantity  of  carbonic- 
acid  produced  by  the  respiration  of  fifty  scholars  will  be  about  750 
cubic  inches  in  an  hour. 

From  these  calculations,  we  must  see  how  soon  the  air  of  a  school- 


566  APPENDIX. 

room  becomes  unfit  to  sustain  the  animal  powers,  and  how  unfavorable 
to  vigorous  mental  effort  such  a  contaminated  atmosphere  must  prove 
to  be.  To  avoid  this  most  serious  evil,  is  a  desideratum,  which  has  not 
yet  been  reached  in  the  construction  of  schoolhouses. 

In  my  opinion,  every  house  and  room  which  is  closed  for  any  con- 
siderable time  upon  a  concourse  of  people  should  be  warmed  by  pure 
air  from  out  of  doors,  heated  by  furnaces  placed  in  a  cellar,  (and  every 
schoolhouse  should  have  a  cellar,)  or  in  some  contiguous  apartment, 
so  that  the  supply  of  air  for  the  fire  should  not  be  from  the  schoolroom. 
Furnaces  for  warming  external  air  may  be  constructed  cheaply,  so  as 
effectually  to  answer  the  purposes  of  warmth  and  ventilation. 

When  a  quantity  of  warm  fresh  air  is  forced  into  a  schoolroom  by 
means  of  a  furnace,  the  foul  air  is  forced  out  at  every  crevice,  and 
at  the  ventilating  passages;  the  currents  are  all  warm,  quite  to  these 
passages. 

But  if  the  room  is  warmed  by  a  stove  or  fireplace,  the  cold  air  from 
without  rushes  in  at  every  passage  and  every  crevice,  and  while  the 
parts  of  the  body  nearest  the  fire  are  too  warm,  the  currents  of  cold 
air  rushing  to  the  fire  to  sustain  the  combustion  keep  all  the  other 
parts  cold  and  uncomfortable.  This  is  a  most  direct  way  to  produce 
disease  ;  nothing  can  affect  the  system  more  unfavorably  than  currents 
of  cold  air  coming  upon  us  when  quite  warm. 

I  have  said  that  schoolhouses  should  have  cellars  under  them.  The 
tioor  of  a  building  without  a  cellar  is  always  cold,  and  often  damp ; 
this  tends  to  keep  the  feet  of  scholars  cold,  while  the  head,  in  a  region 
of  air  much  warmer,  will  be  kept  hot.  This  is  both  unnatural  and 
unhealthful.  The  feet  should  always  be  kept  warm  and  the  head  cool. 
No  person  can  enjoy  good  health  whose  feet  are  habitually  cold.  In 
schoolrooms  heated  by  stoves,  the  feet  are  very  liable  to  be  cold,  while 
the  upper  stratum  of  air,  kept  hot  and  dry  by  a  long  reach  of  pipe, 
produces  a  very  unpleasant  and  unfavorable  state  of  the  head  —  head- 
ache, vertigo,  and  syncope  often  take  place  in  such  a  room. 

The  human  body  is  so  constituted,  that  it  can  bear  almost  any 
degree  of  heat  or  cold,  if  the  change  be  not  too  sudden,  and  all  parts 
of  it  be  subjected  to  it  alike.  We  find  no  particular  inconvenience 
from  respiring  air  at  the  temperature  of  ninety  degrees  on  the  one 
hand,  or  at  zero  on  the  other  ;  but  inequalities  of  temperature,  at  the 
same  time,  affect  us  very  differently,  and  can  never  be  suffered  for  a 
long  time  without  danger. 

There  is  one  consideration  in  the  preparation  of  furnaces  for  warm- 


APPENDIX.  5G7 

ing  rooms,  that  should  not  be  overlooked.  The  object  should  be  to 
force  into  the  room  a  large  quantity  of  air,  heated  a  tew  degrees  above 
the  temperature  required,  rather  than  a  small  quantity  at  a  much 
higher  temperature.  The  air-chamber  should  be  capacious,  and  the 
passages  free.  The  air  should  always  be  taken  from  out  of  doors,  and 
never  from  a  cellar.  The  air  of  a  cellar  is  often  impure  itself,  and,  if 
pure,  a  cellar  that  is  at  all  tight  cannot  furnish  an  adequate  supply. 
The  whole  air  of  a  schoolroom  should  be  changed  at  least  every  hour : 
if  oftener,  it  would  be  better.  If  a  cellar  is  not  much  larger  than  the 
room  above  it,  this  supply  will  soon  be  exhausted  also.  The  air  of  the 
cellar  may  be  sufficient  to  supply  the  combustion  of  the  fuel ;  this  is 
all  it  should  do  —  and  for  this  purpose  it  is  better  than  air  from  out 
of  doors,  as  the  coldness  of  this  checks  the  heat,  and  diminishes  the 
temperature  of  the  fire,  and  its  power  of  heating  the  furnace. 

In  giving  my  views  on  this  subject,  I  have  been  so  desultory  as  to 
embrace  nearly  all  that  I  can  say  on  the  other  queries  proposed  to 
me.  At  any  rate,  my  letter  is  already  of  an  unreasonable  length, 
and  I  must  come  to  a  close.  Wishing  you  every  success  in  the 
arduous  duties  of  your  present  station,  I  remain  truly  and  afleutionutely 
yours, 

S.  B.  WOODWARD. 


(C.) 

Extract  of  a  letter  from  BENJAMIN  SILUMAN,  Professor  of  Chemistry 
in  Yale  College,  in  reply  to  an  inquiry  similar  to  the  SECOND  pro- 
posed to  Dr.  Woodward.  —  See  p.  441. 

OF  our  atmosphere,  only  one-fifth  part,  by  volume,  is  fitted  to  sus- 
tain life.  That  portion  is  oxygen  gas ;  the  remaining  four-fifths  being 
azote  or  nitrogen  gas,  which,  when  breathed  alone,  kills  by  suffocation. 
The  withdrawing  of  the  oxygen  gas,  by  respiration  or  otherwise, 
destroys  the  power  of  the  atmosphere  to  sustain  life,  and  this  alone 
furnishes  a  decisive  reason  why  fresh  air  must  be  constantly  supplied, 
in  order  to  support  animal  life.  But  this  is  not  all.  Every  contact 
of  the  air  with  the  lungs  generates  in  the  human  subject  from  six  to 
eight  per  cent  of  carbonic-acid  gas  —  the  same  gas  that  often  destroys 
the  lives  of  people  who  descend  incautiously  into  wells,  or  who  remain 
in  close  rooms,  with  a  charcoal  fire  not  under  a  flue.  This  gas  —  the 


568  APPENDIX. 

carbonic  acid  —  kills,  it  is  true,  by  suffocation,  as  azote  does,  and  as 
•water  acts  in  drowning.  But  this  is  not  all.  It  acts  positively,  with  a 
peculiar  and  malignant  energy,  upon  the  vital  powers,  which,  even 
when  life  is  not  instantly  destroyed,  it  prostrates  or  paralyzes,  probably 
through  the  nervous  system. 

I  find  by  numerous  trials  made  with  my  own  lungs,  that  a  confined 
portion  of  air,  —  sufficient,  however,  to  fill  the  lungs  perfectly  with  a 
full  inspiration,  —  is  so  contaminated  by  a  single  contact,  that  a  candle 
will  scarcely  burn  in  it  at  all ;  and,  after  three  contacts,  the  candle  will 
then  go  out,  and  an  animal  would  die  in  it  as  quickly  as  if  immersed 
in  azote,  or  even  in  water. 

It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  a  constant  renewal  of  the  air  is  indispen- 
sable to  safety  as  regards  life,  and  no  person  can  be  compelled  to 
breathe,  again  and  again,  the  same  portions  of  air.  without  manifest 
injury  to  health,  and,  it  may  be,  danger  to  life. 

It  follows,  then,  that  the  air  of  apartments,  and  especially  of  those 
occupied  by  many  persons  at  once,  ought  to  be  thrown  off  by  a  free 
ventilation  ;  and,  when  blown  from  the  lungs,  the  same  air  ought  not 
to  be  again  inhaled  until  it  has  been  purified  from  the  carbonic-acid 
gas,  and  its  due  proportion  of  oxygen  gas  restored.  This  is  effected 
by  the  upper  surface  of  the  green  leaves  of  trees  and  plants,  when 
acted  upon  by  the  direct  solar  rays.  The  carbonic-acid  gas  is  then 
decomposed,  the  carbon  is  absorbed,  to  sustain,  in  part,  the  life  of  the 
plant,  by  affording  it  one  element  of  its  food,  while  the  oxygen  gas  is 
liberated,  and  restored  to  the  atmosphere. 


(D.) 

Extract  of  a  letter  from  DR.    SAMUEL    G.   HOWE,  Director  of  the 

Institution  for  the  Education  of  the  Blind,  in  Pearl  Street,  Boston. — 

See  p.  472. 

I  TAKE  it  for  granted,  that  the  existence  of  blindness  in  the  human 
race,  like  every  other  physical  infirmity,  is  the  consequence  of  departure 
from  the  natural  laws  of  God  ;  that  the  proportion  of  blind  persons  in 
every  community  is  dependent  upon  the  comparative  degree  of  viola- 
tion of  the  natural  laws ;  and  that  scientific  observation  can  in  almost 
every  case  point  to  the  kind  and  degree  of  violation. 

Imperfect  vision,  partial   av.d   total    blindness,  are    more   common 


APPENDIX.  569 

among  men  than  animals,  and  in  civilized  than  in  savage  or  barbarous 
nations.  It  seems  to  be  well  ascertained,  that  blindness  is  more  com- 
mon as  we  approach  the  equator ;  and  that  on  the  same  parallel  it  is 
more  frequent  in  dry,  sandy  soils,  than  in  humid  ones. 

It  is  supposed  by  some,  that,  in  very  high  latitudes,  blindness  is  more 
frequent  than  in  the  temperate  zones,  on  account  of  the  strong  reflec- 
tion of  the  sun's  rays  by  the  snow ;  but  besides  that  we  have  no  statisti- 
cal returns  to  confirm  this  opinion,  there  are  other  causes  which  make 
it  doubtful ;  the  solar  rays  are  much  less  powerful,  the  days  are  short, 
and  the  tendency  to  local  or  general  inflammations  and  congestions  of 
blood  is  much  less  in  cold  than  in  warm  climates.  Without,  however, 
dwelling  upon  general  rules,  I  will  come  at  once  to  causes  operating  in 
our  own  climate. 

Any  one  who  has  reflected  that  man  was  created  with  a  perfect 
physical  organization  —  that  his  eye,  the  noblest  organ  of  sense,  was 
fitted  to  reach  to  a  distant  star,  or  to  examine  the  texture  of  the  gossa- 
mer's web,  will  be  struck  by  the  fact  that  every  tenth  man  he  meets  is 
either  near-sighted,  or  far-sighted,  or  weak-eyed,  or  has  some  affection 
or  other  of  the  vision.  Now,  the  frequency  of  this  departure  from  the 
natural  state  of  the  vision  is  not  a  fortuitous  circumstance ;  if  there 
were  but  a  single  case,  it  must  be  referable  to  a  particular  cause ;  and. 
a  fortiori,  when  it  prevails  in  every  section  of  the  country,  and  in  every 
generation.  Let  us  consider  the  greatest  derangement  of  vision  — 
blindness  ;  there  are  very  few  cases  where  the  eye  is  totally  insensible 
to  light ;  let  us  call  every  person  blind  whose  organ  of  vision  is  so  per- 
manently deranged,  that  he  cannot  distinguish  the  nails  upon  his  fin- 
gers ;  for  many  persons  can  see  how  many  fingers  are  held  up  between 
the  eye  and  a  strong  light,  who  cannot  see  the  nails.  Of  persons 
blind  to  this  degree,  and  of  those  totally  blind,  there  are  about  one  in 
two  thousand  in  the  United  States.  This  calculation  is  warranted  by 
statistical  returns,  which  are  liable  to  error,  only  in  putting  down  too 
few. 

Of  these  six  thousand  five  hundred  persons,  but  very  few  lose  their 
vision  by  wounds,  injuries,  or  acute  inflammation  :  the  great  majority 
are  blind  in  consequence  of  violation  of  the  natural  laws,  either  by 
themselves  or  their  parents ;  for  I  hold  it  to  be  indisputable,  that 
almost  every  case  of  congenital  blindness  is  the  penalty  paid  by  the 
sufferer  for  the  fault  of  the  parent  or  progenitor.  The  number  of 
cases  of  hereditary  blindness,  and  of  hereditary  tendency  to  diseases 
of  the  eye,  which  have  come  under  my  observation,  have  established 
this  beyond  all  doubt  in  my  own  mind. 


570  APPENDIX. 

I  have  known  many  cases,  where  a  parent,  with  defective  vision, 
has  had  half  his  children  blind ;  and  one  case,  where  both  parents 
had  defective  vision,  and  all  their  children,  seven  in  number,  were 
blind. 

There  are,  then,  causes  at  work  in  our  own  community,  which 
destroy  the  vision  of  one  two-thousandth  part  of  our  population,  and 
impair  the  vision  of  a  much  greater  part ;  and  although  each  indi- 
vidual thinks  himself  secure,  and  attributes  the  blindness,  or  defective 
vision  of  his  neighbor,  to  some  accidental  or  peculiar  circumstance, 
from  which  he  himself  enjoys  immunity,  yet  the  cause  will  certainly 
have  its  effect;  the  violation  of  the  natural  laws  must  have  their 
penalty  and  their  victim  —  as  a  ball,  shot  into  a  dense  crowd,  must  hit 
somebody.  It  is  incumbent,  then,  upon  each  one,  in  his  individual 
capacity,  to  avoid  the  remote  and  predisposing,  as  well  as  the  immedi- 
ate causes  of  impaired  vision ;  and  it  is  incumbent  on  those,  who  have 
an  influence  upon  the  condition  and  regulations  of  society,  to  use  that 
influence  for  the  same  end. 

It  would  lead  to  tedious  details  to  consider  the  various  modes  in 
which  each  individual  or  each  parent  should  guard  against  the  impair- 
ment of  vision ;  but  there  are  some  obvious  dangers  to  which  children 
are  exposed  in  schools,  which  may  be  pointed  out  in  a  few  words. 

You  will  often  see  a  class  of  children  reading  or  writing  with  the 
sun  shining  on  their  books,  or  writing  in  a  dark  afternoon  with  their 
backs  to  the  window,  and  their  bodies  obstructing  its  little  light ;  and 
if  you  tell  the  master  he  is  perilling  the  eyesight  of  his  scholars,  he 
thinks  he  gives  you  a  complete  discomfiture  by  saying,  that  he  has 
kept  school  so  for  ten  years,  and  never  knew  a  boy  to  become  blind ; 
nevertheless,  it  is  a  cause  of  evil,  and  so  surely  as  it  exists  it  will  be 
ibllowed  by  its  effect. 

A  boy  reading  by  twilight,  or  by  the  blaze  of  a  fire,  or  by  moonlight 
even,  will  tell  you  he  does  not  feel  the  effects ;  nevertheless,  they  follow 
as  closely  as  the  shadow  upon  the  substance ;  and  if,  ten  years  after- 
wards, you  see  the  boy  selecting  glasses  at  an  optician's,  and  ask  him 
what  caused  his  imperfect  vision,  he  will  tell  you  that  there  was  no 
particular  cause ;  that  is,  the  amount  of  evil  done  at  any  particular 
time  was  not  perceptible  —  as  a  toper,  whose  system  is  tottering  to 
ruin,  cannot  believe  that  any  particular  glass  of  brandy  ever  did  him 
any  harm. 

We  should  never  read  but  in  the  erect  posture ;  we  should  never 
read  when  the  arterial  system  is  in  a  state  of  high  action  ;  we  should 


APPENDIX.  57 1 

never  read  with  too  much  or  too  little  light;  we  .should  never  read 
with  a  da/zling  light  of  the  sun.  or  fire,  striking  on  our  face. 

Schoolrooms  should  be  arranged  in  such  a  manner,  that  the  light 
of  the  sun  can  be  admitted  in  the  right  direction  —  not  dazzling  the 
eyes,  but  striking  unon  the  books  :  there  should  be  facilities  for  admit- 
ting the  light  fullv  in  dark  weather,  and  for  excluding  it  partly  when 
the  sun  shines  brilliantly. 

I  believe  an  attention  to  the  physiology  and  laws  of  vision,  by  parents 
and  instructors,  would  be  of  great  benefit  to  children,  and  diminish 
the  number  of  opticians  :  for  as  surely  as  a  stone  thrown  up  will  come, 
down,  so  surely  does  exposure  to  causes  of  evil  bring  the  evil,  at  some 
time,  in  some  way,  upon  somebody.  Truly  yours, 

SAMUICI,  G.  HOWH. 
HORACK   MANN,  ESQ., 

Secretary  of  the  Board  of  Education. 


U»*\:llI.I.     I'KX.H., 

axo.  a.  R  A  x  »  *  Av 


SOUTHERN  BRANCH, 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA, 

LIBRARY, 

UOS  ANGELES,  CALIF. 


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